Golden uttered a cry of delight, patting her little foot blithely to the merry measure of the dance music.
"The very thing," she cried, and then she shivered slightly. "Perhaps it belonged to poor Erma," she thought.
But in a few minutes Golden's blue gingham lay on the floor, and she had slipped into the old brocade, and hooked it together. It fitted her perfectly.
The neck was low, and finished with a deep frill of fine, old, yellow lace. The sleeves were short, and the dimpled shoulders and beautifully moulded arms were exposed to the greatest advantage.
Golden then took up the comb and brush and brushed her long, yellow ringlets out of curl until they fell about her slender, graceful form like a veil of summer sunshine.
"If I only had the pearls, now, I might readily pass for the phantom," she said, looking at the reflection of herself in the glass. "How nice I look. This dress is quite becoming, I declare."
As she turned round, admiring the long, soft, trailing folds of the brocade, something rattled in what appeared to be the region of the pocket.
Golden ran her slim fingers into the pocket, and they encountered a rent between the lining and the material of the dress.
Following the rent with her fingers to the very edge of the skirt, they encountered something which she drew out and found to be a necklace of large, gleaming, milk-white pearls.