There was a pause; Miriam drooped over the piano, touching a note here

and there softly.

"Yes, some of them are historic," resumed the Marquess meditatively.

"There is a necklace which belonged to Madame du Barri, and another

which Queen Elizabeth gave to one of her ladies-in-waiting. An ancestor

of ours was a son of hers. I think the time has arrived when the jewels

should, so to speak, be resurrected; that they should pass into your

possession."

Miriam's heart beat fast; but the flush of gratification did not rise to

her face, for she was thinking of the base, the nefarious uses to which

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her husband would put these historic jewels.

"Indeed, they almost belong to you by right," said the Marquess. "They

have always gone with the title."

His voice grew gradually slower, and presently he stopped and looked

straight before him, as if he had forgotten her presence. Indeed, he had

done so; for as he spoke of the title, there rose suddenly, like a

cinematograph film thrown on the screen, the bent figure, grey face and

piercing eyes of the real owner of the title. Not for the first time,

he, the false Marquess, was giving away that which belonged to the

shabbily-dressed old man who had refused to accept the position which

was his by right of inheritance. The pause was a momentary one only, and

the Marquess went on, "I am a widower; fortunately, Percy is married, and the family jewels

really belong to you. You shall have them."

Miriam moistened her lips; her heart was beating thickly. As a woman,

she desired the jewels; as a wife, she must obey Heyton.

"Oh, how good of you!" she said, trying to keep her voice steady.

"Indeed, it is more than kind of you, Lord Sutcombe. But--but I don't

think I ought to accept them--now. They must be of very great value----"

"They are," he interjected, not complacently but with a sigh; for he

recalled them as they shone on the neck and arms of his dead wife.

"And I feel as if they would be a great responsibility," Miriam

continued. "Percy thinks of--of going abroad, of travelling for a time.

Perhaps, when we come back and have settled down, you--you will be so

good, so kind as to give them to me. I can't thank you enough."

Her voice broke; for weak and foolish as she was, she could not but

think of the still weaker and more vicious man who had planned so base a

use for the Sutcombe diamonds.




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