d she told
this to her mistress out of sheer garrulousness. "But if no one found
out," said Lady Harman, "how do you know?"

"Not till her death, me lady," said Peters, brushing, "when all things
are revealed. Her husband, they say, made it a present of to another
lady and the other lady, me lady, had it valued...."

Once the idea had got into Lady Harman's head it stayed there very
obstinately. She surveyed the things on the table before her with a
slightly lifted eyebrow. At first she thought the idea of disposing of
them an entirely dishonourable idea, and if she couldn't get it out of
her head again at least she made it stand in a corner. And while it
stood in a corner she began putting a price for the first time in her
life first upon this coruscating object and then that. Then somehow she
found herself thinking more and more whether among all these glittering
possessions there wasn't something that she might fairly regard as
absolutely her own. There were for example her engagement ring and,
still more debateable, certain other pre-nuptial trinkets Sir Isaac had
given her. Then there were things given her on her successive birthdays.
A birthday present of all presents is surely one's very own? But selling
is an extreme exercise of ownership. Since those early schooldays when
she had carried on an unprofitable traffic in stamps she had never sold
anything--unless we are to reckon that for once and for all she had sold
herself.

Concurrently with these insidious speculations Lady Harman found herself
trying to imagine how one sold jewels. She tried to sound Peters by
taking up the story of the necklace again. But Peters was uninforming.
"But where," asked Lady Harman, "could such a thing be done?"

"There are places, me lady," said Peters.

"But where?"

"In the West End, me lady. The West End is full of places--for things of
that sort. There's scarcely anything you can't do there, me lady--if
only you know how."

That was really all that Peters could impart.

"How _does_ one sell jewels?" Lady Harman became so interested in this
side of her perplexities that she did a little lose sight of those
subtler problems of integrity that had at first engaged her. Do
jewellers buy jewels as well as sell them? And then it came into her
head that there were such things as pawnshops. By the time she had
thought about pawnshops and tried to imagine one, her original complete
veto upon any idea of selling had got lost t