like to see a man quite so
handsome."

"You will change your mind when you see him in tweeds," returned Viola.
"He loathes evening clothes."

Jane regarded her anxiously. There was something in Viola's tone which
disturbed and shocked her. It was inconceivable that Viola should be
in love with that youth, and yet--"He looks very young," said Jane in a
prim voice.

"He IS young," admitted Viola; "still, not quite so young as he looks.
Sometimes I tell him he will look like a boy if he lives to be eighty."

"Well, he must be very young," persisted Jane.

"Yes," said Viola, but she did not say how young. Viola herself, now
that the excitement was over, did not look so young as at the beginning
of the evening. She removed the corals, and Jane considered that she
looked much better without them.

"Thank you for your corals, dear," said Viola. "Where Is Margaret?"

Margaret answered for herself by a tap on the door. She and Viola's
maid, Louisa, had been sitting on an upper landing, out of sight,
watching the guests down-stairs. Margaret took the corals and placed
them in their nest in the jewel-case, also the amethysts, after
Viola had gone. The jewel-case was a curious old affair with many
compartments. The amethysts required two. The comb was so large that it
had one for itself. That was the reason why Margaret did not discover
that evening that it was gone. Nobody discovered it for three days, when
Viola had a little card-party. There was a whist-table for Jane, who had
never given up the reserved and stately game. There were six tables in
Viola's pretty living-room, with a little conservatory at one end and
a leaping hearth fire at the other. Jane's partner was a stout old
gentleman whose wife was shrieking with merriment at an auction-bridge
table. The other whist-players were a stupid, very small young man who
was aimlessly willing to play anything, and an amiable young woman who
believed in self-denial. Jane played conscientiously. She returned trump
leads, and played second hand low, and third high, and it was not until
the third rubber was over that she saw. It had been in full evidence
from the first. Jane would have seen it before the guests arrived, but
Viola had not put it in her hair until the last moment. Viola was wild
with delight, yet shamefaced and a trifle uneasy. In a soft, white gown,
with violets at her waist, she was playing with Harold Lind, and in her
ash-blond hair was Jane Carew's amethys