Forthwith to the glass she went, in a charming excitement.
"Light all the candles you can find!" she exclaimed.
"Well, my eyes, but them is beautiful, my lady!" ejaculated the maid, staring with a smirk, and feeling that at such a moment she might talk a little, without risk, which, indeed, was true.
So with bed-room and dressing-table candles, and a pair purloined even from old Lady Alice's room, a tolerably satisfactory illumination was got up, and the jewels did certainly look dazzling.
The pendants flashed in her ears—the exquisite collar round her beautiful throat—the tiara streamed livid fire over her low Venus-like forehead, and her eager eyes and parted lips expressed her almost childlike delight.
There are silver bullets against charmed lives. There are women from whose snowy breasts the fire-tipped shafts of Cupid fall quenched and broken; and yet a handful of these brilliant pellets will find their way through that wintry whiteness, and lie lodged in her bleeding heart.
After I know not how long a time spent before the glass, it suddenly struck Lady Jane to inquire of the crumpled letter, in which the name of Masterson figured, and of whose contents she knew, in fact, nothing, but that they named no day for the General's return. She had grown curious as to who the donor might be. Were those jewels a gift from the General's rich old sister, who had a splendid suit, she had heard, which she would never put on again? Had they come as a bequest? How was it, and whose were they?
And now with these flashing gems still dangling so prettily in her ears, and spanning her white throat, as she still stood before the glass, she applied herself to spell out her General's meaning in better temper than for a long time she had read one of that gallant foozle's kindly and honest rigmaroles. At first the process was often interrupted by those glances at the mirror which it is impossible under ordinary circumstances to withhold; but as her interest deepened she drew the candle nearer, and read very diligently the stiffly written lines before her.
They showed her that the magnificent present was from himself alone. I should be afraid to guess how many thousand pounds had been lavished upon those jewels. An uxorious fogey—a wicked old fool—perhaps we, outside the domestic circle, may pronounce him. Lady Jane within that magic ring saw differently.
The brief, blunt, soldier-like affection that accompanied this magnificent present, and the mention of a little settlement of the jewels, which made them absolutely hers in case her "old man" should die, and the little conjecture "I wonder whether you would sometimes miss him?" smote her heart strangely.