It was a little case in plaited straw, which had also come open; the beads of a rosary protruded from it.
They both stood up in silence. Captain Belval examined the rosary.
“What a curious coincidence!” he muttered. “These amethyst beads! This old-fashioned gold filigree setting! . . . It’s strange to find the same materials and the same workmanship. . . .”
He gave a start, and it was so marked that Coralie asked:
“Why, what’s the matter?”
He was holding in his fingers a bead larger than most of the others, forming a link between the string of tens and the shorter prayer-chain. And this bead was broken half-way across, almost level with the gold setting which held it.
“The coincidence,” he said, “is so inconceivable that I hardly dare . . . And yet the face can be verified at once. But first, one question: who gave you this rosary?”
“Nobody gave it to me. I’ve always had it.”
“But it must have belonged to somebody before?”
“To my mother, I suppose.”