After all, there is no love like a mother's, especially when life is hard and hearts are wounded and sore.
The poor countess's image had already grown dim and indistinct; it seemed ages since that morning's scene; the fumes of that intoxication had almost evaporated; the evil enchantment nearly faded. He wondered at having been so much moved by that passionate, self-abnegating devotion, when a vague memory of it flitted across his mind, with a pity that was more akin to contempt than love. Of course Agatha had been right in reminding him of his mother's objection to his choice of herself; but equally of course, had she cared for him, all that would have been thrown to the winds. People's relations—especially mothers—always make a point of objecting to and hindering the course of true love, while lovers always make a point of overriding all such hindrances and defying all such objections—it was an accepted part of the game, absolutely orthodox.
Flinging things into suit-cases and kit-bags next morning, he remembered that he had no little keepsake to take home to the mother, and ran out to ransack the shops crammed with glittering inutilities for something to please her. Under present impecunious circumstances, this could only be done by going home second-class, and Monte Carlo shops scarcely lend themselves to modest gifts; customers in that City of Dis are expected to reckon in golden four-louis pieces. It was a bewildering and irritating thing to a hurried man to review those windows, ablaze with diamonds and glowing with rubies, piled with rich-scented russia leathers, clasped and bound and fitted with gold and silver inconveniences of every description, or run the eye over daintily carved ivories, costly bric-à-brac, gorgeous apparel, and priceless lace, in search of something at once exquisite, suitable, and inexpensive.
He was consigning the total merchandise of Monte Carlo to perdition, in a last and frantically hopeless marshalling of a jeweller's window, when his eye was caught by a necklace of costly gems and beautiful workmanship, at which he gazed in open-mouthed amazement for some seconds. The design, unusual and unmistakable, the jewels—sapphires set with diamonds—all were familiar and recognizable at a glance. It was an exact duplicate of the Somers sapphires, the necklace inherited by Agatha, and constituting her chief fortune, of the value of some thousands of pounds—the necklace she had often been counselled by outsiders to sell, but never by the family—and had always consistently refused to part with. She had worn that necklace at his coming-of-age dance, the day on which he had definitely recognized the nature of his feelings for her. It was spoken of in the family as her dowry. There it lay, sparkling and quivering in the clear morning sunlight, among stars, tiaras, collars, and rivières of diamonds, and ornaments set with every known jewel. It shone out with a distinction all its own from these splendid and costly things, an exact counterpart of Agatha's necklace, here for sale, in this very Monte Carlo shop before his dazed eyes; the gems, winking and sparkling with many colours, seemed alive and beckoning to him, burdened with secrets they longed to tell. In a moment he was in the shop, stammering in unintelligible French, and pointing to the necklace.
"Oui, oui, M'sieur; the sapphires are exceptionally fine and the diamonds of good water," the lady at the counter acknowledged; "the value being so great we are willing to take much less than they are worth. Yes; it is fresh in the window this morning. Second-hand? But naturally; the workmanship, very fine and of exquisite art, is long out of date. Such things are no longer made. It is absolutely unique."
"It came from England?" he asked in his native tongue. "It must have come from England. It is known; it has a history. There is but one necklace like that, and I've known it all my life."
"On the contrary," said the proprietor, stepping across from the other side of the shop, and desirous of showing his undoubted right to it, "the necklace was sold to me only yesterday by M. Mosson, the well-known M. Mosson, with whom we frequently have dealings of this kind. Sometimes we sell them on commission, sometimes we buy them outright. But M. Mosson is careful in the extreme. He takes nothing of which the proprietorship is doubtful. The history of this beautiful and unique specimen of jeweller's art is well-known to him. But Monsieur is suffering? A glass of water? Cognac?"
Ivor, white and dizzy, had dropped into an armchair in the middle of the shop, and was staring stupidly before him, trying to piece the thing out in his mind, and realize what it meant, while the jeweller, who had paid a sum down, instead of selling on commission this time, was a little anxious lest the astute Mosson should have made a mistake. He remembered that the sum the usurer had taken was known by both of them to be far under the real value, and that he had seemed anxious to have the money without delay. It was unlike that benefactor of his species to betray anxiety on any subject.
"Has Mosson come back?" Ivor gasped presently, "or is he still at that place up in the mountains?" and learnt in reply that Mr. Mosson had so far refreshed himself by his stay in that sequestered region that he had returned to his well-known villa hard by, upon hearing which Ivor at once rushed from the shop and hurried in the direction of the villa, to the disquietude of the jeweller, who repaired without loss of time to a private room to discuss the matter with Madame.
"What, again?" the philanthropist asked with a cynical smile, when his young client burst in upon his pious reflections and calculations; "and accounts closed only yesterday? Now this is most unfortunate—because I am not in a position to accommodate you at present, M. Paul."