"Miss Ravengar, what should you say this is?"
"That?" replied Beatrice. "That is a part of a hairpin. See!"
She laid it upon her open palm beside her own stiletto. The terminal of the latter corresponded exactly in form and colour with the broken fragment: at least, the difference, if difference there were, was imperceptible by the naked eye.
"It certainly looks like a hairpin."
"Looks like it, do you say?" said Beatrice, with a sort of reproach in her tone. "It is," she asseverated firmly.
"What reason have you for this opinion other than mere resemblance?" asked Idris, a little surprised by her air of certitude.
"I do not reason upon it. I know it is a hairpin," she replied, with a peculiar emphasis upon the "know."
There was a strangeness in her manner, an entire reversal of her former self: her face seemed hallowed by a light like the inspired expression of a sibyl. The expression was momentary only, dying as soon as born, but it left Idris curiously impressed.
"Hilda the Alruna may have looked like that, when delivering her oracles," he thought.