A moment later Margaret’s white face smiled at them as she was whirled away.
IX
MARGARET leaned over the glass show-counter in Daddy Lerwick’s curiosity-shop and looked down at the pathetic medley within.
Her figure, in its usual elaborate elegance, was in sharp contrast to the dingy surroundings. The fine camel’s-hair shawls hung up behind her, the old velvet curtain with its tapestry border, the moth-eaten furs, the tarnished Mexican sombrero, the ancient horse-pistols, the innumerable curious articles which heaped every corner of the room, down to the chintz curtain, screening the rear end of the shop in a weak-minded and fluttering way, formed a patchwork background.
In the case was an ivory fan of antique workmanship which had drifted here at last, carrying with it a history which might frame many a tale, and with it a tortoise-shell comb, with a top eight inches high, some gold link cuff buttons, a string of pearls that had clasped the throat of a beauty in 1776, but lay now, pale and lustreless and forgotten, the price, perhaps, of a week’s lodging or of a grave, God knows!
But Margaret was interested in a bracelet set with topaz, still beautiful, still radiant, still warm with a life’s history. She passed the stones to and fro between her slender fingers, pricing them with careless indifference. The romance and the sorrow of it would have touched Rose Temple and sent her shuddering from the purchase. To Margaret they signified nothing but jewels and the value of jewels, for her life of selfish ease, of social prominence, her endless quest for pleasure, had nearly atrophied those finer and more tender emotions of sympathy and love for her fellow creatures.
Daddy Lerwick himself waited on her. He was a short, thickset man with the face of an underdone pudding, his gray whiskers attached like wings below the ears. His small dull eyes seemed to observe little, but he was notorious for driving a shrewd bargain and nothing really escaped him.
“The stones are good stones,” he commented, clasping his fat creased hands on the case in an attitude which displayed the solitaire on his little finger, “and the price very low, madam.”
Margaret laughed, her eyes haggard again. “You get them second-hand,” she observed carelessly; “who brought these?”
He looked at her without surprise and unclasped his hands. “I have the name,” he said; “the law requires that we take the name, but I don’t think they ever give the right one, and we don’t tell it—usually. It was a young girl, madam, quite a young girl.”