Then, very cautiously, she broke the seals and opened with a beating heart the lid of the box. Inside was a little morocco casket.
With a tremulous hand she opened it, and found inside it a pair of earrings and a brooch. Both earrings and brooch were of oxydized silver, dark blue in colour passing insensibly into black. The pendants of the earrings were in the shape of little fishes hanging upon little hooks and with mobile little scales, which at the slightest movement made them seem alive. Each of them had a pair of very tiny but very brilliant diamond eyes. The brooch on the other hand represented a butterfly, also with two sparkling diamond eyes; one of them was blue, a rare colour for a diamond.
Henrietta was indeed pleasantly surprised.
There was not a line of writing along with them, but was there any necessity for it? How simple, how nice it all was! How well he must know her taste who had selected it! Her husband could never have hit upon such an idea.
What should she say to her husband if he should notice them? But why should she show them to anybody? She would not even put them on till the last moment, just before she started on her journey. All day long she was as happy as a child who is going to its first party; even in her husband's presence she could not control her delight.
But Hátszegi never enquired why she was so joyous. On the day before the entertainment he went with his wife to the town in question, where he owned, not the castle, it is true, but a comfortable mansion of considerable extent, whose first floor was rented by a mining engineer and his family. These worthy people felt highly honoured at receiving the baron and his lady beneath their roof. They gave their distinguished guests their best rooms which looked out upon the street, and retired themselves to the back of the house. The mining engineer had a pretty young wife, with whom Henrietta immediately made friends. Ladies love the close companionship of their own sex best whenever something entirely different is occupying their thoughts.
On the morning of the great day the big-wigs of the little town hastened to pay their respects to the great lady who had arrived in their midst, and whose reputation for benevolence had spread far and wide. Amongst them was an aged woman whose hands and head were continually shaking, and who almost collapsed with terror every time anybody accosted her unexpectedly. She was the widow of a Unitarian pastor, well to do, people said, and a large mining proprietor. Her nervous affection was due to a painful episode in her life. One night Fatia Negra and his band had broken into her house and played havoc there, and ever since she had been tremulous and easily terror-stricken. The old woman was delighted to see Henrietta, whom she called the guardian angel of the county, and she would not be content till she had seized Henrietta's little hands in her own trembling ones and raised them painfully to her lips.
At last the joyous evening arrived. Henrietta put on a very simple ball-dress, compared with which the dress of the mining engineer's wife was really luxurious. The black ornaments well became her attire, but the engineer's wife was astounded at the simplicity of the great lady's costume. She had now only one anxious moment to go through, the moment when her husband first saw the new ornaments. But this moment sped away without any catastrophe, although with much of heart throbbing. Hátszegi observed the jewels in the ears and round the neck of his bride and paid her the compliment of saying that they contrasted admirably with the snowy whiteness of her alabaster neck.
So no ill came of it after all.
When the time came, the baron's carriage drove up to the door and the ladies entered it. The baron himself was to come afterwards with the mining engineer when the empty carriage returned. In the meantime the baroness was entrusted to the care of the mining engineer's wife, who was one of the notabilities of the little town.