"Yes, my dear. But where are your mother's diamonds?"
"I have not got them," Elsie answered quietly. "I saw Bertha wearing them just before my father died. Don't be vexed, dearest Mrs. Lennard."
But the old lady was vexed; a flush mounted to the roots of her silver hair, and her foot beat upon the carpet.
"Then I suppose some of Robert's creditors have got them now," she said angrily. "Bertha deserves all that she has had to bear. It is just chastisement. I wonder that you can take your wrongs so patiently!"
Elsie turned to her gently, with a wonderfully sweet look in her brown eyes.
"I was not patient at first," she answered. "There was a battle to fight. Afterwards, Meta helped me."
"Meta?" repeated Mrs. Lennard in a puzzled tone. "Ah, you mean the lady who was engaged to Harold Waring. How did she help you, my dear?"
"I think it was the touch of her vanished hand that calmed me," Elsie said in a hushed tone. "Like Hamlet, 'I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious;' I was glad at first when I heard of Bertha's humiliation. And then I read Meta's story in her manuscript, and knew that she had suffered more than I, and had forgiven."
She stood quite still a moment, a graceful figure enfolded in golden light, with an exalted look on her face.
"Elsie," Mrs. Lennard said suddenly, "you are a beautiful woman. You are like some one in a poem, child! There is a certain kind of beauty that only comes through pain."