Emma had been standing near when this conversation began, and she drew closer to listen, not with any clandestine intention, but only with a natural curiosity. She caught up the words in a disjointed way. What reason could there be for not wearing your mother's pearls? She would have gone and asked the question direct of Catherine, but that just then her partner came for her; and for the rest of the evening she had no time to consider any such question; nor was it till she found herself in the fly in the middle of the night rumbling and jolting along the dark road that skirted the Common, by Hester's side, that this mysterious speech occurred to her mind. She had been talking of the advantage of being introduced by a well-known person and thus put at once "on a right footing."
"You don't want that. You know everybody; you have been here all your life," she said. "And I am sure you got plenty of partners, and looked very nice. And what a pretty necklace that is," said Emma, artlessly entering upon her subject. "Are they real? Oh, you must not be offended with me, for I never had any nice ornaments. The youngest never has any chance. If they are real, I suppose they are worth a great deal of money; and you must be quite rich, or you would not be able to afford them."
"We are not rich; indeed we are very poor," said Hester, "but the pearls are my mother's. She got them when she was young, from her mother. They have belonged to us for numbers of years."
"I wonder what Cousin Catherine could mean!" said Emma innocently.
"About my pearls?" cried Hester, pricking up her ears, and all her spirit awakening, though she was so sleepy and tired of the long night.
"She said you oughtn't to wear them. She said you shouldn't have them. I wonder what she meant! And Mr. Harry Vernon, that tall gentleman, he seemed to understand, for he got quite red and angry."
"I oughtn't to wear them—I shouldn't have them!" Hester repeated, in a blaze of wrath. She sat bolt upright, though she had been lying back in her corner indisposed for talk.
"Oh, I dare say she didn't mean anything," said Emma, "only spite, as you are on the other side."
Hester did not reply, but she was roused out of all her sleepiness in a moment. She let Emma prattle on by her side without response. As they drove past the Grange a window was opened softly, and some one seemed to look out.
"Oh, I wonder if that was Mr. Edward," said Emma. "I wonder why he stayed away. Is he after some girl, and doesn't want Cousin Catherine to know? If it were not that you would scarcely speak to each other when you met, I should say it was you, Hester."