er hear of such a thing?"

"But that wasn't my necklace, Arthur!" said Eve.

"Of course it was your necklace," said Mr. Prohack.

"Do you mean to tell me--" Eve began, and it was a new Eve.

"Of course I do!" said Mr. Prohack, who had now thoroughly subdued his
temper in the determination to bring to a head that trouble about the
necklace and end it for ever. He was continuing his remarks when the
wall suddenly fell down with an unimaginable crash. Eve said nothing,
but the soundless crash deafened Mr. Prohack. Nevertheless the mere fact
that Sissie's wedding lay behind and not before him, helped him somewhat
to keep his spirits and his nerve.

"I will never forgive you, Arthur!" said Eve with the most solemn and
terrible candour. She no longer played a part; she was her formidable
self, utterly unmasked and savagely expressive without any regard to
consequences. Mr. Prohack saw that he was engaged in a mortal duel, with
the buttons off the deadly foils.

"Of course you won't," said he, gathering himself heroically together,
and superbly assuming a calm which he did not in the least feel. "Of
course you won't, because there is nothing to forgive. On the contrary,
you owe me your thanks. I never deceived you. I never told you the
pearls were genuine. Indeed I beg to remind you that I once told you
positively that I would never buy you a _pearl_ necklace,--don't you
remember? You thought they were genuine, and you have had just as much
pleasure out of them as if they had been genuine. You were always
careless with your jewellery. Think how I should have suffered if I had
watched you every day being careless with a rope of genuine pearls! I
should have had no peace of mind. I should have been obliged to reproach
you, and as you can't bear to be reproached you would have picked
quarrels with me. Further, you have lost nothing in prestige, for the
reason that all our friends and acquaintances have naturally assumed
that the pearls were genuine because they were your pearls and you were
the wife of a rich man. A woman whose husband's financial position is
not high and secure is bound to wear real pearls because people will
_assume_ that her pearls are false. But a woman like yourself can wear
any pinchbeak pearls with impunity because people _assume_ that her
pearls are genuine. In your case there could be no advantage whatever in
genuine pearls. To buy them would be equivalent to throwing money in the
street. Now, as i