temptation.

"Fool!" he chided her, after overcoming his first disappointment. "How
do you know but that to this necklace is due the present condition
of the world? With this Cleopatra may have captivated Caesar, Mark
Antony! This has heard the burning declarations of love from the
greatest warriors of their time, it has listened to speeches in the
purest and most elegant Latin, and yet you would want to wear it!"

"I? I wouldn't give three pesos for it."

"You could give twenty, silly," said Capitana Tika in a judicial
tone. "The gold is good and melted down would serve for other jewelry."

"This is a ring that must have belonged to Sulla," continued Simoun,
exhibiting a heavy ring of solid gold with a seal on it.

"With that he must have signed the death-wrarrants during his
dictatorship!" exclaimed Capitan Basilio, pale with emotion. He
examined it and tried to decipher the seal, but though he turned
it over and over he did not understand paleography, so he could not
read it.

"What a finger Sulla had!" he observed finally. "This would fit two
of ours--as I've said, we're degenerating!"

"I still have many other jewels--"

"If they're all that kind, never mind!" interrupted Sinang. "I think
I prefer the modern."

Each one selected some piece of jewelry, one a ring, another a watch,
another a locket. Capitana Tika bought a reliquary that contained a
fragment of the stone on which Our Saviour rested at his third fall;
Sinang a pair of earrings; and Capitan Basilio the watch-chain for
the alferez, the lady's earrings for the curate, and other gifts. The
families from the town of Tiani, not to be outdone by those of San
Diego, in like manner emptied their purses.

Simoun bought or exchanged old jewelry, brought there by economical
mothers, to whom it was no longer of use.

"You, haven't you something to sell?" he asked Cabesang Tales,
noticing the latter watching the sales and exchanges with covetous
eyes, but the reply was that all his daughter's jewels had been sold,
nothing of value remained.

"What about Maria Clara's locket?" inquired Sinang.

"True!" the man exclaimed, and his eyes blazed for a moment.

"It's a locket set with diamonds and emeralds," Sinang told the
jeweler. "My old friend wore it before she became a nun."

Simoun said nothing, but anxiously watched Cabesang Tales, who, after
opening several boxes, found the locket. He examined it carefully,
opening and shutting it repeatedly. It