“It would have been better if you had not had them, no doubt. But the duke was always good-natured and indulgent, and your husband was of course perfectly aware that the jewels were protected by settlement; he renewed the settlement on his deathbed. Besides, the great Indian diamond is not an ordinary jewel—it is a fortune in itself.”
She was prepared for this or some similar remark and did not flinch.
“It is precisely that which is so annoying,” she replied. “That jewel is so conspicuous; to appear without it at a drawing-room or any function of any importance would be absurd—odious. Surely some way can be found to leave me the usage of them until the boy’s majority?”
“No way at all,” said Hurstmanceaux sternly. “They will go to Coutts’s, and stay there until his majority. By the way, where are they now?”
“In my jewel-safe,” she answered sullenly.
“What imprudence!”
“It has a Chubb’s lock.”
“Why did you not keep them at the bank? Nobody wears such jewels as these every evening.”
“I wear them very often.”
Something aggressive in her tone aroused her brother.