The way in which they took my story was a great surprise to me, because, although they were so good, they had never paid any attention to it until it became exciting. They listened with mere politeness until the scent of a very wicked man began to taint my narrative; but from that moment they drew nearer, and tightened their lips, and held their breath, and let no word escape them. It made me almost think that people even of pure excellence, weaned as they are from wicked things by teaching and long practice, must still retain a hankering for them done at other people's cost. “And now,” cried the Major, “let us see it”--even before I had time to pull it out, though ready to be quick, from a knowledge of his ways. “Show it, and you shall have my opinion. And Mary's is certain to agree with mine. My dear, that makes yours so priceless.” “Then, Nicholas, if I retain my own, yours is of no value. Never mind that. Now don't catch words, or neither opinion will be worth a thought. My dear, let us see it and then judge.” “My own idea, but not so well expressed,” Major Hockin answered, as he danced about, while I with stupid haste was tugging at my package of the hateful locket. For I had not allowed that deceitful thing any quarters in my pocket, where dear little relics of my father lay, but had fastened it under my dress in a manner intended in no way for gentlemen to think about. Such little things annoy one's comfort, and destroy one's power of being quite high-minded. However, I got it out at last, and a flash of the sun made the difference. “Brilliants, Mary!” the Major cried; “brilliants of first water; such as we saw, you know where; and any officer in the British army except myself, I do believe, would have had them at once in his camlet pouch--my dear, you know all about it. Bless my heart, how slow you are! Is it possible you have forgotten it? There came out a fellow, and I cut him down, as my duty was, without ceremony. You know how I used to do it, out of regulation, with a slash like this--” “Oh, Nicholas, you will be over the cliff! You have shown me how you used to do it, a thousand times--but you had no cricks in your back then: and remember how brittle the chalk is.” “The chalk may be brittle, but I am tough. I insist upon doing every thing as well as I did it forty years ago. Mary, you ought not to speak to me like that. Eighteen, nineteen, twenty brilliants, worth twenty pounds apiece upon an average, I do believe. Four hundred pounds. That would finish our hotel.” “Nicholas!” “My dear, I was only in fun. Erema understands me. But who is this beautiful lady?” “The very point,” I exclaimed, while he held it so that the pensive beauty of the face gleamed in soft relief among bright blue enamel and sparkling gems. “The very thing that I must know--that I would give my life to know--that I have fifty thousand fancies--” “Now don't be excited, Erema, if you please. What will you give me to tell you who it is?”