tiaras--that is to say, imitation
crowns and coronets--and exhibited with a stout and solemn dowager for
a pediment. One of the Wallings had set this fashion, and now every one
of importance wore them. One lady to whom Montague was introduced made
a speciality of pearls--two black pearl ear-rings at forty thousand
dollars, a string at three hundred thousand, a brooch of pink pearls at
fifty thousand, and two necklaces at a quarter of a million each!

This incessant repetition of the prices of things came to seem very
sordid; but Montague found that there was no getting away from it. The
people in Society who paid these prices affected to be above all such
considerations, to be interested only in the beauty and artistic
excellence of the things themselves; but one found that they always
talked about the prices which other people had paid, and that somehow
other people always knew what they had paid. They took care also to see
that the public and the newspapers knew what they had paid, and knew
everything else that they were doing. At this Opera, for instance,
there was a diagram of the boxes printed upon the programme, and a list
of all the box-holders, so that anyone could tell who was who. You
might see these great dames in their gorgeous robes coming from their
carriages, with crowds staring at them and detectives hovering about.
And the bosom of each would be throbbing with a wild and wonderful
vision of the moment when she would enter her box, and the music would
be forgotten, and all eyes would be turned upon her; and she would lay
aside her wraps, and flash upon the staring throngs, a vision of
dazzling splendour.

Some of these jewels were family treasures, well known to New York for
generations; and in such cases it was becoming the fashion to leave the
real jewels in the safe-deposit vault, and to wear imitation stones
exactly like them. From homes where the jewels were kept, detectives
were never absent, and in many cases there were detectives watching the
detectives; and yet every once in a while the newspapers would be full
of a sensational story of a robbery. Then the unfortunates who chanced
to be suspected would be seized by the police and subjected to what was
jocularly termed the "third degree," and consisted of tortures as
elaborate and cruel as any which the Spanish Inquisition had invented.
The advertising value of this kind of thing was found to be so great
that famous actresses also had costly jew