“Professor Ched Ramar has asked me to accept this exquisite gold idol, aunt. I couldn’t—could I?”
“No, I think not, dear,” returned Mrs. Morrison. “It is such a wonderful and costly thing, that——”
“It pains me that you decline,” murmured Ched Ramar. “If I have offended, I am sorry—deeply sorry. But my excuse must be that it is a custom of my country to offer trifling gifts like this to ladies who seem to admire them. You understand, I hope?”
Mrs. Morrison looked from the tall, dark Indian to her niece, and seemed to make up her mind with a jerk.
“Yes, I think I understand,” she answered. “Of course, if it is the Indian custom, that makes a difference.” Then, turning to Clarice, she went on: “I think you may accept it, Clarice. And, I may add, that it is an opportunity which does not often come to a girl.”
Ched Ramar put the idol in Clarice’s hands, and she held it before her with an expression of rapturous delight in her fair face.
“How can I thank you?” she murmured.
“Oh, it is nothing,” declared Ched Ramar, putting up his hands with a protesting gesture. “Let us go down again. There are some pieces of jade—vases—that I don’t think I have shown you, and that I should feel honored if you and Mrs. Morrison would take with you as mementos of this evening.”
When, half an hour later, the party left the house, the two ladies had the magnificently carved jade vases to which Ched Ramar had referred. But Clarice held clasped to her bosom, as if she feared she might lose it, the gold idol that seemed to have been merely an uncontemplated gift, but which Nick Carter remembered had been promised to her by the strange voice from the lips of the gigantic Buddha.
“I wonder just how far thought transference and hypnotism really can go?” he said, as he entered his library and lighted a cigar, an hour or so afterward.