Chapter 10 - Page 2

bracelet, and enchanted
with the effect it produced on her slim wrist; yet, even while
admiring it, and rejoicing that it was hers, she had already
transmuted it into specie, and reckoned just how far it would go
toward the paying of domestic necessities. For whatever came to
her now interested her only as something more to be offered up
to Nick.

The door opened and Nick came in. Dusk had fallen, and she
could not see his face; but something in the jerk of the door-
handle roused her ever-wakeful apprehension. She hurried toward
him with outstretched wrist.

"Look, dearest--wasn't it too darling of Ellie?"

She pressed the button of the lamp that lit her dressing-table,
and her husband's face started unfamiliarly out of the twilight.
She slipped off the bracelet and held it up to him.

"Oh, I can go you one better," he said with a laugh; and pulling
a morocco case from his pocket he flung it down among the scent-
bottles.

Susy opened the case automatically, staring at the pearl because
she was afraid to look again at Nick.

"Ellie--gave you this?" she asked at length.

"Yes. She gave me this." There was a pause. "Would you mind
telling me," Lansing continued in the same dead-level tone,
"exactly for what services we've both been so handsomely paid?"

"The pearl is beautiful," Susy murmured, to gain time, while her
head spun round with unimaginable terrors.

"So are your sapphires; though, on closer examination, my
services would appear to have been valued rather higher than
yours. Would you be kind enough to tell me just what they
were?"

Susy threw her head back and looked at him. "What on earth are
you talking about, Nick! Why shouldn't Ellie have given us
these things? Do you forget that it's like our giving her a
pen-wiper or a button-hook? What is it you are trying to
suggest?"

It had cost her a considerable effort to hold his eyes while she
put the questions. Something had happened between him and
Ellie, that was evident-one of those hideous unforeseeable
blunders that may cause one's cleverest plans to crumble at a
stroke; and again Susy shuddered at the frailty of her bliss.
But her old training stood her in good stead. There had been
more than one moment in her past when everything-somebody
else's everything-had depended on her keeping a cool head and a
clear glance. It would have been a wonder if now, when she felt
her own everything at stake, she had not been able to put up as
good a defence.

"What is it?" she repeated impatiently, as Lansing continued to
remain silent.

"That's what I'm here to ask," he returned, keeping his eyes as
steady as she kept hers. "There's no reason on earth, as