As she spoke she held out a gold locket and chain which she had been hiding under her cloak. A glance told me that it was of great value, and a rare piece of workmanship, encrusted with precious jewels, and shaped like a pear. I took it gingerly, knowing no more of a goldsmith’s trade than an unborn babe, and fairly caught in my own trap. Whether she saw my awkwardness or not, I could not tell, but she drew back a little, seeming to examine me with curious eyes. I suddenly remembered my hands, when I became aware that both girls were looking at them; my signet was on my right hand, and their sharp eyes had discovered it, beyond a doubt; but what of it? They knew nothing of French heraldry—or as little as I knew of them, and I was more anxious than ever to peep under those hoods. Meanwhile, in spite of my busy thoughts, I was trying in vain to find an opening in the trinket. It showed not a crevice, but lay in my hand, a marvellous golden pear, gleaming with rubies and diamonds and sapphires, and with a crest that I could not decipher on its lower end.
“It baffles you, monsieur,” remarked the taller maiden, a trifle coldly.
The perspiration gathered on my brow; what, in the name of the saints, could I do with it? And I was figuring as a master goldsmith with the abominable thing lying sealed in my hand. The smaller nymph began to shake with laughter again under her cloak.
“’Tis magic, Daria,” she said, with the merriest laugh in the world, her hood slipping back enough to disclose the rosy, roguish face of a girl of sixteen or seventeen, with a pair of eyes as blue as the sky.
“I will have it open for all that,” retorted her companion imperiously. “Monsieur, there is a secret spring.”
“Precisely, mademoiselle,” I replied, with a bow, “so secret that ’twill not confide in a stranger.”
At this both laughed a little, but I saw that mademoiselle the imperious was growing impatient, and, in desperation, I turned the locket over and over, and as I did so my eye caught sight of the Russian Imperial arms on the small end of the pear, where a golden clasp represented the stem. In twisting the trinket thus in my fingers I must have pressed a spring, for lo! the pear fell apart and mademoiselle clapped her hands.
“The problem is solved,” she cried, while both of them craned their necks to look at the two pieces.
These already riveted my attention; in one side was a lock of hair and in the other a miniature that no one in Moscow could mistake, flattered though it was. It was the face of the dead Czar’s sister, her serene highness Sophia Alexeievna. There was an exclamation, either of surprise or pleasure, from one of the girls, and as I cast a covert glance at them I discovered that both hoods had been slightly displaced, and I saw the features of the taller of the two. Saint Denis, what a face! Young, beautiful, with the spirit of an empress; the dark eyes, keen and brilliant, the lips and cheeks deeply coloured, the brows sharply defined, the forehead like milk. My glance was so searching and so earnest that mademoiselle looked up and, encountering it, flashed me a look of such hauteur as I had never before seen in the eyes of woman, but she disdained to draw her hood. Meanwhile, the smaller and merrier beauty had given away to delight at the adventure.
“Take out the portrait, monsieur,” she said; “I have one here to put in its stead.”