'Don't you go out of sight,' I said; 'you cannot resist such things as those, if they be what you think them.'
'Jack, I shall have to trounce thee yet. I am now a man of honour, and entitled to the duello. What will you take for it, Mistress Lorna? At a hazard, say now.'
'I am not accustomed to sell things, sir,' replied Lorna, who did not like him much, else she would have answered sportively, 'What is it worth, in your opinion?'
'Do you think it is worth five pounds, now?'
'Oh, no! I never had so much money as that in all my life. It is very bright, and very pretty; but it cannot be worth five pounds, I am sure.'
'What a chance for a bargain! Oh, if it were not for Annie, I could make my fortune.'
'But, sir, I would not sell it to you, not for twenty times five pounds. My grandfather was so kind about it; and I think it belonged to my mother.'
'There are twenty-five rose diamonds in it, and twenty-five large brilliants that cannot be matched in London. How say you, Mistress Lorna, to a hundred thousand pounds?'
My darling's eyes so flashed at this, brighter than any diamonds, that I said to myself, 'Well, all have faults; and now I have found out Lorna's—she is fond of money!' And then I sighed rather heavily; for of all faults this seems to me one of the worst in a woman. But even before my sigh was finished, I had cause to condemn myself. For Lorna took the necklace very quietly from the hands of Squire Faggus, who had not half done with admiring it, and she went up to my mother with the sweetest smile I ever saw.
'Dear kind mother, I am so glad,' she said in a whisper, coaxing mother out of sight of all but me; 'now you will have it, won't you, dear? And I shall be so happy; for a thousandth part of your kindness to me no jewels in the world can match.'