"H--uh!" snorted Stivers. "I suppose Mary Stuart thought opals beautiful, too, but they didn't help to keep her head on her shoulders!" "But," argued Sybil, "the poor, lovely, tormented, blundering queen would have lost her royal head even if she had never owned an opal." "You don't know that," answered Stivers; "but you do know that she wore opals and lost it. My very own cousin had a little, weeny, footy bit of an opal scarf-pin given him, and wore it, like the fool he always was, and had his house burned over his head for his pains. Don't talk to me! I _know_! Wasn't a friend of my husband's given an opal, and while he was carrying it round in his clothes, making up his silly mind how to set it, didn't his mother-in-law, a great, bouncing, big, hearty woman, up and die?" Sybil nearly strangled over a combination of coffee and laugh. "Oh, Mrs. Stivers," she exclaimed, "if you make that story public there will certainly be a boom in the sale of small opals--if one can believe the statements of the comic papers, at least." "All right, Miss. You may laugh, but I'll watch my home closer than ever for fire or burglars. I'd as soon move into a new house on Friday, and I'd a sight rather break a looking-glass than wear that thing for an hour!" and she retired pretty thoroughly vexed. Sybil touched the great, shimmering quiver of color with her lips, whispering: "Poor heart, that suffers for me!" And then, with the fresh odor of the lilacs about her, she opened the envelope which contained a note from Dorothy, enclosing a portion of a letter written by Mrs. Lawton within the hour of her arrival at the White house. Dorrie wrote briefly, sending proudest congratulations to "the successful, admired, newly triumphant actress, who was yet her own dear Sybbie--sweet sister, all unchanged, in truth and love," and a tender assurance of her own well-being, of her hopeful, trustful waiting, knowing that whether she received death or life the gift would come from God, who never made mistakes. So she waited calmly. "It seems rather mean," she added, "to enclose a portion of mamma's 'note'--of six pages--but, Syb, I can't help it, I simply _can't_! I wouldn't let papa or Leslie know it for the world, but you will understand and not think it disrespectful. Do write, Sybbie, to your Dorothy!"