"About his kingly neck."
"But how—unless someone put it on?"
"Undoubtedly someone did. He must have been a captive once, and probably escaped."
It could serve no good end to acquaint her with his actual suspicions, which might be ill-founded, after all.
"It's beautiful," she continued, gazing in admiration on the collar's simple massiveness. "But it's not for me, I'm sure." She held it out for him to take. But he bent above the skin.
"Then pitch it away," he instructed, laconically. "Toss it into the sea."
She colored, looking at him strangely. She could not throw away his property—anything of such great intrinsic value. She was baffled again, as he managed so frequently. Her hand and the golden circlet fell at her side. She could think of no appropriate speech of final rejection. A whimsical notion only arose to her groping mind.
"Fancy me wearing this priceless band of splendor," she said, "and eating with a stick!"
"It will just about fit around your waist," he conjectured, taking it from her as he rose. With easy strength he bent it in his hands, to make it more snugly conform to her slender and graceful little body.
Why should he not bend it thus, she thought, who had wrenched it from a tiger? She felt how weak and inadequate was her own diminishing struggle. But to wear this band—a symbol, almost, of Grenville's ownership—— A hot recurrence of her former pride came surging to her bosom.