Nora sat stupefied. How strange that a girl like Connie should possess such things!—and others, nothing!
“Are they worth a great deal of money?”
“Oh, yes, thousands,” said Connie, still looking at herself, in mingled vanity and discomfort. “That’s why I oughtn’t to wear them. But I shall wear them!” She straightened her tall figure imperiously. “After all they were mamma’s. I didn’t give them myself.”
Popular as the Marmion ball had been, the Magdalen ball on the following night was really the event of the week. The beauty of its cloistered quadrangle, its river walks, its President’s garden, could not be rivalled elsewhere; and Magdalen men were both rich and lavish, so that the illuminations easily surpassed the more frugal efforts of other colleges. The midsummer weather still held out, and for all the young creatures, plain and pretty, in their best dancing frocks, whom their brothers and cousins and friends were entertaining, this particular ball struck the top note of the week’s romance.
“Who is that girl in black!” said his partner to Douglas Falloden, as they paused to take breath after the first round of waltzing. “And—good heavens, what pearls! Oh, they must be sham. Who is she?”
Falloden looked round, while fanning his partner. But there was no need to look. From the moment she entered the room, he had been aware of every movement of the girl in black.
“I suppose you mean Lady Constance Bledlow.”
The lady beside him raised her eyebrows in excited surprise.
“Then they’re not sham! But how ridiculous that an unmarried girl should wear them! Yes they are—the Risborough pearls! I saw them once, before I married, on Lady Risborough, at a gorgeous party at the Palazzo Farnese. Well, I hope that girl’s got a trustworthy maid!”