"I will tell you. When you had gone away that night, and I was in the ball-room, and later, when I was in my dressing-room alone, and could think of it all again, the remembrance of what you had said tormented me. The jewels you had seen me wearing were, indeed, as I had told you, not my own; nevertheless, the remembrance of all I had ever read about converting jewels into money occupied my mind that night, and occupied it after that night for days and days. One day Mr. Tatham came to Poynings, and in the evening being, as he always is, very entertaining, he related an extraordinary story of a client of his. The tale, as he told it, had many particulars, but one caught my attention. The client was a woman of large fortune, who married for love a man much younger than herself, a dissipated fellow who broke her fortune, and might have broken her heart, but for his getting killed in riding a steeple-chase. After his timely death it was discovered, among a variety of dishonourable transactions, that he had stolen his wife's diamonds, with the connivance of her maid; had had them imitated in mock stones by a famous French dealer in false jewelry; and had substituted the false for the real. No suspicion of the fact had ever crossed his wife's mind. The discovery was made by the jeweller's bill for the imitation being found among the papers. This led to inquiry of the dealer, who gave the required information. The moment I heard the story, I conceived the idea of getting you the money you wanted by a similar expedient." "Oh, mother!" She lifted one hand with a gesture of caution, and continued, in a voice still lower than before: "_My_ jewels--at least those I have sold--were my own, George. Those I wore that night were, as I told you, family diamonds; but Mr. Carruthers gave me, when we were married, a diamond bracelet, and I understood then that it was very valuable. I shrank from such a deception. But it was for you, and I caught at it." George Dallas sat with his hands over his face and no more interrupted her by a single word. "By one or two questions I stimulated Mr. Carruthers's curiosity in the strange story, so that he asked Mr. Tatham several questions as to where the mock jewels were made, whether they cost much, and, in fact, procured for me all the information I required. That bracelet was the only thing I had of sufficient value for the purpose, because it is expensive to get an imitation of any ornament made of very fine stones, as my bracelet is, and richly set. If the act were still to do, I should do it, George--for you--and still I should feel, as I do most bitterly feel, that in doing it I shamefully deceive my husband!"