es, obelisks, arches, tinily re-embodied,
completed the discreet cluster; in which, however, even after tentative
reinforcement from several quaint rings, intaglios, amethysts,
carbuncles, each of which had found a home in the ancient sallow satin
of some weakly-snapping little box, there was, in spite of the due
proportion of faint poetry, no great force of persuasion. They looked,
the visitors, they touched, they vaguely pretended to consider, but
with scepticism, so far as courtesy permitted, in the quality of their
attention. It was impossible they shouldn't, after a little, tacitly
agree as to the absurdity of carrying to Maggie a token from such a
stock. It would be--that was the difficulty--pretentious without being
"good"; too usual, as a treasure, to have been an inspiration of the
giver, and yet too primitive to be taken as tribute welcome on any
terms. They had been out more than two hours and, evidently, had found
nothing. It forced from Charlotte a kind of admission.

"It ought, really, if it should be a thing of this sort, to take its
little value from having belonged to one's self."

"Ecco!" said the Prince--just triumphantly enough. "There you are."

Behind the dealer were sundry small cupboards in the wall. Two or three
of these Charlotte had seen him open, so that her eyes found themselves
resting on those he had not visited. But she completed her admission.
"There's nothing here she could wear."

It was only after a moment that her companion rejoined. "Is there
anything--do you think--that you could?"

It made her just start. She didn't, at all events, look at the objects;
she but looked for an instant very directly at him. "No."

"Ah!" the Prince quietly exclaimed.

"Would it be," Charlotte asked, "your idea to offer me something?"

"Well, why not--as a small ricordo."

"But a ricordo of what?"

"Why, of 'this'--as you yourself say. Of this little hunt."

"Oh, I say it--but hasn't my whole point been that I don't ask you to.
Therefore," she demanded--but smiling at him now--"where's the logic?"

"Oh, the logic--!" he laughed.

"But logic's everything. That, at least, is how I feel it. A ricordo
from you--from you to me--is a ricordo of nothing. It has no reference."

"Ah, my dear!" he vaguely protested. Their entertainer, meanwhile, stood
there with his eyes on them, and the girl, though at this minute more
interested in her passage with her friend than in anything else, again
met his