"I can," interposed Sir Jasper: "there's no disgrace in having bought it where I did. I got it at a pawnbroker's."
Alice's heart beat violently. A pawnbroker's! Was her haunting fear growing into a dread reality?
"I was one day at the East-end of London, walking fast, when I saw a topaz-and-amethyst cross in a pawnbroker's window," said Sir Jasper. "The thought struck me that it would be a pretty ornament for my wife, and I went in to look at it. In talking about jewellery with the master, he reached out this diamond bracelet, and told me that would be a present worth making. Now, I knew my lady's head had been running on a diamond bracelet; and I was tempted to ask what was the lowest figure he would put it at. He said it was the most valuable article of the sort he had had for a long while, the diamonds of the first water, worth four hundred guineas of anybody's money; but that, being second-hand, he could part with it for two hundred and fifty. And I bought it. There's where I got the bracelet, ma'am."
"That was just the money Colonel Hope gave for it new at Garrards'," said Alice. "Two hundred and fifty guineas."
Sir Jasper stared at her: and then broke forth with a comical attempt at rage, for he was one of the best-tempered men in the world.
"The old wretch of a cheat! Sold it to me at second-hand price, as he called it, for the identical sum it cost new! Why, he ought to be prosecuted for usury."
"It is just what I tell you, Sir Jasper," grumbled his lady. "You will go to these low second-hand dealers, who always cheat where they can, instead of to a regular jeweller; and nine times out of ten you get taken in."
"But your having bought it of this pawnbroker does not bring me any nearer to knowing how he procured it," observed Alice.
"I shall go to him this very day and ascertain," returned Sir Jasper. "Tradespeople may not sell stolen bracelets with impunity. You shall hear from me as soon as possible," he added to Alice, as he escorted her out to the carriage.
But Sir Jasper Livingstone found it easier to say a thing than to do it. The pawnbroker protested his ignorance and innocence. If the bracelet was a stolen bracelet, he knew nothing of that. He had bought it, he said, in the regular course of business, at one of the pawnbrokers' periodical sales: and of this he convinced Sir Jasper.