ed kindly: 'Anything?'

'Not now: we will dine.'

She had missed, had lost, she feared, her own jewelbox; a casket of no
great treasure to others, but of a largely estimable importance to her.

After the heavy ceremonial entrance and exit of dishes, she begged the
earl to accompany her for an examination of the contents of the box.

As soon as her chamber-door was shut, she said, in accents of alarm:
'Mine has disappeared. Carstairs, I know, is to be trusted. She remembers
carrying the box out of my room; she believes she can remember putting it
into the fly. She had to confess that it had vanished, without her
knowing how, when my boxes were unpacked.'

'Is she very much upset?' said the earl.

'Carstairs? Why, yes, poor creature! you can imagine. I have no doubt she
feels for me; and her own reputation is concerned. What do you think is
best to be done?'

'To be done! Overhaul the baggage again in all the rooms.'

'We've not failed to do that.'

'Control yourself, my dear. If, by bad luck, they're lost, we can replace
them. The contents of this box, now, we could not replace. Open it, and
judge.'

'I have no curiosity--forgive me, I beg. And the servant's fly has been
visited, ransacked inside and out, footmen questioned; we have not left
anything we can conceive of undone. My lord, will you suggest?'

'The intrinsic value of the gems would not be worth--not worth Aminta's
one beat of the heart. Upon my word--not one!'

An amatory knightly compliment breasting her perturbation roused an
unwonted spite; and a swift reflection on it startled her with a
suspicion. She cast it behind her. He could be angler and fish, he would
not be cat and mouse.

She said, however, more temperately: 'It is not the value of the gems. We
are losing precious minutes!'

'Association of them with the giver? Is it that? If that has a value for
you, he is flattered.'

This betrayed him to the woman waxing as intensely susceptible in all her
being as powder to sparks.

'There is to be no misunderstanding, my lord,' she said. 'I like--I value
my jewels; but--I am alarmed lest the box should fall into hands--into
strange hands.'

'The box!' he exclaimed with an outline of a comic grimace; and, if
proved a voluptuary in torturing, he could instance half a dozen points
for extenuation: her charm of person, withheld from him, and to be
embraced; her innocent naughtiness; compensation coming to her in excess
for a transient infl