Changing in the afternoon was a much simpler matter than dressing in the morning. Some of the troubled vagueness and docility of interrupted sleep still hung about Mrs. Greene, and she hardly noticed that her body was being turned this way and that, her hair brushed, and her frock fastened. "Everything is ready for you if you still feel you would like to go over your jewels," suggested Miss Dorset on the way downstairs. "Of course I would; I hadn't forgotten," snapped Mrs. Greene, whose irritability proclaimed clearly that she had forgotten. Miss Dorset opened the library door and disclosed the thin November sunlight streaming over the open cases laid out on the table, setting the diamonds a-glitter and shining into the heart of rubies and sapphires. Mrs. Greene stopped in the doorway and drew a quick breath of pleasure. "They look very fine," she said excitedly, "I didn't know I had so much. Of course there are some of my mother's jewels there, as well as Geoffrey's mother's, and all the things he gave me." She moved over to the table and sat down, lifting up her diamond necklace and pendant to pore over its intricate but austere design. "Isn't this beautiful?" she asked, not waiting for an answer. "Geoffrey gave it me after his first very successful book. We took a house in the country so that he could be free to finish it without interruptions, and he wrote all the summer. It was a lovely summer too, although Edwin's engagement in the autumn upset us all rather. We didn't think it very wise. However, Mr. Greene got his book finished, and it came out in November and was very successful indeed, and this is what he gave me the Christmas after. I remember thinking it was terribly extravagant of him, but of course I didn't know then that his book would go so well in America." "It is a wonderful necklace," said Miss Dorset, holding it up to the sunlight. "Well, that's not the way to look at it. Put it against a piece of dark stuff if you want to see it properly." She drew a pair of slender emerald ear-rings towards her. "These would do nicely for Lavinia some day," she began, but broke off and picked up a little gold ring set with an insignificant sapphire. "Miss Dorset, look at this," she exclaimed. "That's what Geoffrey gave me after his very first book was published." She looked at it reminiscently, not hearing Miss Dorset's comment of "Indeed, how very interesting."