“And nobody knows what it is beginning a house and all that without any money. I had to part with my diamonds--those last ones, don’t you remember, Kate? which he gave me to make me forget Charlie. Oh, how silly girls are! I shouldn’t be so ready, I can tell you, to run away another time. I should keep my diamonds. And I have not had a decent dress since I went to India--not one. The other ladies got boxes from home, but I never sent to Louise except once, and then she did so bother me about a bill to be paid, as if it were likely I could pay bills when we had no money for ourselves! Tradespeople are so unreasonable about their bills, and so are servants, for that matter, going on about wages. Why, there is Pearson--she waits upon me with a face like a mute at a funeral all because she has not got her last half year’s wages! By the way, I suppose she can have them now? They have got such a pull over us, don’t you know, for they can go away, and when a maid suits you it is such a bore when she wants to go away. I have had such experiences, all through the want of money. And I can’t help feeling, oh how hard of him, when he hadn’t really changed his mind at all, to keep me out of it for those seven years! Seven years is a dreadful piece out of one’s life,” cried Stella, “and to have it made miserable and so different to what one had a right to expect, all for the caprice of an old man! Why did he keep me out of it all these years?” And Stella, now thoroughly excited, sobbed to herself over the privations that were past, from which her father could have saved her at any moment had he pleased. “You ought to be pleased now at least,” said her husband. “Come, Stella, my little girl, let’s shake hands upon it. We’re awfully lucky, and you shall have a good time now.” “I think I ought to have a good time, indeed!” cried Stella. “Why, it’s all mine! You never would have had a penny but for me. Who should have the good of it, if not I? And I am sure I deserve it, after all I have had to go through. Pearson, is that you?” she cried. “Bring me my jewel-box. Look here,” she said, taking out a case and disclosing what seemed to Katherine a splendid necklace of diamonds, “that’s what I’ve been driven to wear!” She seized the necklace out of the case and flung it to the other end of the room. The stones swung from her hand, flashing through the air, and fell in a shimmer and sparkle of light upon the carpet. “The odious, false things!” cried Stella. “Paris--out of one of those shops, don’t you know? where everything is marked ‘Imitation.’ Charlie got them for me for about ten pounds. And that is what I had to go to Government House in, and all the balls, and have compliments paid me on my diamonds. ‘Yes, they are supposed to be of very fine water,’ I used to say. I used to laugh at first--it seemed a capital joke; but when you go on wearing odious glass things and have to show them off as diamonds--for seven years!”