Nouna hesitated, then quietly picked out a pair of diamond solitaire earrings, and held them out under the lamp in her little pink palm. “I should not have known these from real ones,” she said doubtfully, and she looked up with an inquiring glance into the Parisian’s face. Ben Hassan drew himself up with much satisfaction. “You hear, Monsieur,” he said proudly, “Madame would not have known these earrings from real diamonds, and the cost of the pair is only ten francs!” “Ten francs!” echoed Nouna with incredulous delight. And as she turned to her husband with a low murmur, “Oh, George!” the paymaster saw that he was doomed. Without further show of resistance he paid the ten francs, and signed to the bowing, smirking Ben Hassan to pack up his traps and take himself off, which the Parisian did, departing with a torrent of high-flown thanks for their patronage and with every appearance of being highly satisfied with the transaction. So contented did he seem indeed, that so soon as the door closed behind him, and Nouna rushed into the bedroom to try on her purchase, George instinctively took stock of all the portable property which had been within the lively Ben Hassan’s reach, to make sure that his ostensible occupation had not been a cover for a predatory one. He had scarcely reassured himself on this point when Nouna rushed in like a radiant little fire-fly, her new ornaments twinkling in her ears, her eyes dancing with mysterious excitement, her dress changed from a simple muslin to a ball-dress of yellow gauzy material in honour of her brilliant bargain. She flitted up to him almost breathlessly, and pulled his head down to her level that she might whisper into his ear a communication which appeared to be of vital importance. “Do you think,” she suggested solemnly, “that he could have made a mistake, and that they are _real_?” George laughed, and said No, he did not think it at all likely, whereupon she was silent for a little while, and then began again in the same tone, but with much hesitation. “You know, George, he told me that day we went to his bazaar that he had some real diamonds in his stock, and said that, that----” “Well, that what?” asked her husband, keeping his voice at a gently subdued pitch, with a intuitive feeling that a confession was coming. “That if I would call in--some day--by myself--he would show them to me.” “By yourself!” cried George, all his blood on fire in a moment. Nouna seemed at once to become a mere terror-struck heap, and her husband saw his fatal mistake.