giving them individuality and separate life--were faultlessly perfect;
but had minute irregularities of shape, tiny dimples in which a special
radiance hovered. She clasped the necklace round her throat, and, holding
up the hand-mirror, turned her head from side to side--with pardonable
vanity--to judge and enjoy the effect.

Damaris was unlearned in the commercial value of such treasures; nor did
money seem exactly a graceful or pretty thing--in some respects our
maiden was possessed of a very unworldly innocence--to think of in
connection with a present. Still she found it impossible not to regard
these jewels with a certain awe. What the dear Colonel Sahib must have
spent on them! A small fortune she feared. In the buying of this
all-too-costly-gift, then, consisted that business transaction he had
made the excuse for leaving her alone with Faircloth, upon the quay
alongside which lay the _Forest Queen_.

Oh! he surpassed himself! Was too indulgent, too munificent to her!--As
on a former occasion, she totted up the sum of his good deeds. Hadn't he
given up his winter's sport for her sake? Didn't she--and wouldn't an
admiring English reading public presently--owe to his suggestion her
father's noble book? When she had run wild for a space, and sold herself
to unworthy frivolities, hadn't he led her back into the right road, and
that with the lightest, courtliest, hand imaginable, making all
harmonious and sweetly perfect, once more, between her father and
herself? Lastly, hadn't he procured her her heart's desire in the meeting
with Darcy Faircloth--and, incidentally, given her the relief of free
speech, now and whenever she might desire to claim it, concerning the
strange and secret relationship which dominated her imagination and so
enriched the hidden places of her daily life and thought?

Damaris held up the hand-mirror contemplating his gift, this necklace of
pearls; and, from that, by unconscious transition fell to contemplating
her own face. It interested her. She looked at it critically, as at some
face other than her own, some portrait, appraising and studying it. It
was young and fresh, surely, as the morn--in its softness of contour and
fine clear bloom; yet grave to the verge of austerity, owing partly to
the brown hair which, parted in the middle and drawn down in a plain
full sweep over the ears, hung thence in thick loose plait on either
side to below her waist. She looked long and curiously into her o