"I returned to you another exactly like it. These ten years we've been paying for it. You know it was not easy for us, who had nothing. At last it is over, and I am very glad."
Madame Forestier was stunned.
"You say that you bought a diamond necklace to replace mine?"
"Yes; you did not notice it, then? They were just alike."
And she smiled with a proud and naïve pleasure.
Madame Forestier, deeply moved, took both her hands.
"Oh, my poor Mathilde! Why, my necklace was paste. It was worth five hundred francs at most."
XI. THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING[*] (1888)
[* From "The Phantom 'Rickshaw.">[