“Who gave you that?” demanded Canaris, eying it with undisguised surprise; for the pearls were great, globy things, milk-white, and so perfect that any one but Gladys would have seen how costly was the gift.
“Need you ask?” she said, blushing brightly.
“Why not? Do you suspect me?”
“You cannot deceive me by speaking roughly and looking stern. Who but you would put these in my basket without a word, and let me find them there when I laid my work away last night? I was so pleased, so proud, I could not help keeping them, though far too beautiful for me.”
Then Canaris knew who had done it; and his hand tightened over the necklace, while his eye went towards the lake, as if he longed to throw it far into the water. He checked himself, and, turning it about with a disdainful air, said, coldly,—
“If I had given you this, it should have been quite perfect. The cross is not large nor fine enough to match the chain. Do you see?”
“Ah, but the little cross is more precious than all the rest! That is the one jewel my mother left me, and I put it there to make my rosary complete;” and Gladys surveyed it with a pretty mixture of devout affection and girlish pleasure.
“I’ll give you a better one than this,—a string of tiny carved saints in scented wood, blessed by holy hands, and fit to say prayers like yours upon. You will take it, though my gift is not half so costly as his?” he said, eagerly.
“Whose?”
“Helwyze gave you that.”