Sir Charles paused in his walk, and stooped and picked them up. “Yes,” he said, “I gave ten pounds for them, and we had a lot of fun out of them, and you looked as handsome in them, Stella, as if they had been the best. By Jove! to be imitation, they are deuced good imitation. I don’t think I know the difference, do you?” He placed the glittering thing on Katherine’s knee. He wanted to bring her into the conversation with a clumsy impulse of kindness, but he did not know how to manage it. Then, leaving them there, he continued his walk. He could not keep still in his excitement, and Stella could not keep silence. The mock diamonds made a great show upon Katherine’s black gown. “Oh, I wish you’d take them away! Give them to somebody--give them to the children to play with. I’d give them to Pearson, but how could she wear a _rivière_? Fancy my wearing those things and having nothing better! You have no feeling, Kate; you don’t sympathise a bit. And to think that everything might have been quite different, and life been quite happy instead of the nightmare it was! Papa has a great, great deal to answer for,” Stella said. “If that is all you think about it, I may go away,” said Katherine, “for we shall not agree. You ought to speak very differently of your father, who always was so fond of you, and now he’s given you everything. Poor papa! I am glad he does not know.” “But he must have known very well,” cried Stella, “how he left me after pretending to be so fond of me. Do you think either Charlie or I would have done such a thing if we had not been deceived? And so was Lady Jane--and everybody. There was not one who did not say he was sure to send for us home, and see what has happened instead. Oh, he may have made up for it now. But do you think that was being really fond of me, Kate, to leave me out in India without a penny for seven years?” Katherine rose, and the glittering stones, which had only yesterday been Lady Somers’ diamonds, and as such guarded with all the care imaginable--poor Pearson having acquired her perennial look of worry as much from that as anything, having had the charge of them--rattled with a sound like glass, and fell on the floor, where they lay disgraced as Katherine went hurriedly away. And there they were found by Pearson after Lady Somers had finished her toilet and gone downstairs to lunch. Pearson gave a kick at them where they lay--the nasty imitation things that had cost her so many a thought--but then picked them up, with a certain pity, yet awe, as if they might change again into something dangerous in her very hands. CHAPTER XLII. Katherine had put herself unconsciously in her usual place at the head of the luncheon table before Stella came downstairs. At the other end was Sir Charles with little Job, set up on a pile of cushions beside him.