al Lady, as real as the wife of a Lord can be.
Lord Harold Gray's a sure enough Lord, and she's his wife but--but a
chippy, just the same; that's what she is, in spite of the Gray
emeralds and that great Gray rose diamond she wears on the tiniest
chain around her scraggy neck. Do you know, Mag Monahan, that this
Lady Harold Gray was just a chorus girl--and a sweet chorus it must
have been if she sang there!--when she nabbed Lord Harold?

You'd better keep your eye on Nancy Olden, or first thing you know
she'll marry the Czar of Russia--or Tom Dorgan, poor fellow, when he
gets out! ... Well, just the same, Mag, if that white-faced, scrawny
little creature can be a Lady, a girl with ten times her brains, and at
least half a dozen times her good looks--oh, we're not shy on the
stage, Mag, about throwing bouquets at ourselves!

Can she act? Don't be silly, Mag! Can't you see that Obermuller's
just hiring her title and playing it in big letters on the bills for
all it's worth? She acts the Lady Patroness, come to look at us
Charity girls. She comes on, though, looking like a fairy princess.
Her dress is just blazing with diamonds. There's the Lady's coronet in
her hair. Her thin little arms are banded with gold and diamonds, and
on her neck--O Mag, Mag, that rose diamond is the color of rose-leaves
in a fountain's jet through which the sun is shining. It's long--long
as my thumb--I swear it is, Mag--nearly, and it blazes, oh, it blazes--

Well, it blazes dollars into Obermuller's box all right, for the Gray
jewels are advertised in the bill with this one at the head of the
list, the star of them all.

You see it's this way: Lord Harold Gray's bankrupt. He's poor as--as
Nance Olden. Isn't that funny? But he's got the family jewels all
right, to have as long as he lives. Nary a one can he sell, though,
for after his death, they go to the next Lord Gray. So he makes 'em
make a living for him, and as they can't go on and exhibit themselves,
Lady Gray sports 'em--and draws down two hundred dollars a week.

Yep--two hundred.

But do you know it isn't the two hundred dollars a week that makes me
envy her till I'm sick; it's that rose diamond. If you could only see
it, Mag, you'd sympathize with me, and understand why my fingers just
itched for it the first night I saw her come on.

'Pon my soul, Mag, the sight of it blazing on her neck dazzled me so
that it shut out all the staring audience that first night, a