"Upon my word, it's very handsome," he said, looking at the diamond cross outside, but thinking of the love-lock within. "I never saw a locket I liked better. You are very fond of it, I daresay?" he added interrogatively.
"O, yes, I like it very much! I can't bear to part with it."
And here Bessie Lovel, not being gifted with the power of concealing her emotions, fairly broke down and cried like a child.
"My dear Mrs. Austin," exclaimed George Fairfax, "pray don't distress yourself like that. Part with it? Why should you part with your locket?"
"O, Mr. Fairfax, I oughtn't to have told you—Austin would be so angry if he knew—but he has been losing money at that horrid ecarty, and he says he must have ten pounds to-morrow; so my beautiful locket must go to the pawnbroker's."
George Fairfax paused. His first impulse was to lend the poor little woman the money—the veriest trifle, of course, to the lord of Lyvedon. But the next moment another idea presented itself to him. He had the locket lying in the open palm of his hand. It would be so sweet to possess that lock of hair—to wear so dear a token of his mistress. Even those two words, "From Clarissa," had a kind of magic for him. It was a foolish weakness, of course; but then love is made up of such follies.
"If you really mean to part with this," he said, "I should be very glad to have it. I would give you more than any pawnbroker—say, twenty instead of ten pounds, for instance—and a new locket for yourself into the bargain. I shouldn't like to deprive you of an ornament you valued without some kind of compensation. I have taken a fancy to the design of the thing, and should really like to have it. What do you say now, Mrs. Austin—shall that be a transaction between you and me, without any reference to your husband, who might be angry with you for having let me into domestic secrets? You can tell him you got the money from the mont de piété. Look here, now; let's settle the business at once."
He opened his purse, and tumbled the contents out upon the table. Bessie Lovel thought what a blessed state of existence that must be in which people walked this world with all that ready money about them.
"There are just four-and-twenty pounds here," he said cheerily; "so we'll say four-and-twenty."
He saw that she was yielding.