'A pocket pistol.'
'A pocket pistol, Hazel! He isn't as bad as that. What's the matter with him?'
'Just a trifle. You do not love him.'
'They said that would come,' said Josephine dolefully.
'By express, from the land of nowhere,' said Miss Wych nibbling her nuts. 'Marked "Very perishable!!!" '
'But I don't find that it comes.'
'No,' said Hazel coolly, 'that land is a good way off. Isn't it cold work waiting all alone with the diamonds?'
Josephine displayed a magnificent finger. But she looked at it with no reflection of its light in her eyes. 'You speak very coolly,' she said, then letting her hand drop. 'I thought you would feel for me somehow.'
'I tell you I do, or I should not take the trouble of pinching you to see if you have any feeling left for yourself. Does not that ring make you shiver?'
'Sometimes. But what can I do, Hazel? It may as well be John Charteris as anybody else, as long as one can't please oneself. One must marry somebody. You know one must!'