Cassius and I spent two feverish, agonized weeks trying to think what we would do with the diamonds. I never knew before I had so much inventive ability. It was wonderful the things we thought of. One of our ideas was to put a personal in the papers advertising for “Amelia.” We spent five consecutive evenings concocting different ones that would have the effect of rousing “Amelia’s” curiosity and deadening that of everybody else. It did not seem capable of construction. Twist and turn it as you would, you couldn’t state that you had something valuable in your possession for “Amelia” without making the paragraph bristle with a sort of mysterious importance. It was like a trap set and baited to catch the attention of a detective. We did insert one--“Will Amelia kindly publish her present address, and oblige Major and Mrs. Thatcher?”--which, after all, didn’t involve us. And for two weeks we read the papers with beating, hopeful hearts, but there was no reply. I thought “Amelia” never saw it. Cassius thought there was no such person. A month dragged itself away, and there we were with those horrible gems locked in my jewel-box. I began to look pale and miserable, and Cassius told me he thought the diamonds were becoming a “fixed idea” with me, and he’d have to take me away for a change. Once I told him I felt as if I’d never have any peace or be my old gay self again while they were in my possession. He said, that being the case, he’d take them out some night and throw them in the Serpentine, the pond where the despondent people commit suicide. But I dissuaded him from it. “Perhaps they’ll never be claimed,” I said. “And some day when we’re old we can have them set and Elaine can wear them.” “You might even wear them yourself,” Cassius said, trying to cheer me up. “What would be the good?” I answered, gloomily. “I’d be at least sixty before I’d dare to.” All through June I lived under this wearing strain, and I grew thinner and more nervous day by day. The season which is always so lovely and gay was no longer an exciting and joyous time for me. I drove down Bond Street with a frowning face, and it did not cheer me up at all to see how many people I seemed to know. Looking down the vistas of quiet, asphalted streets, where the lines of sedate house fronts are brightened by polished brasses on the doors and flower-boxes at the windows, I was no longer filled with an exhilarating determination to some day be an honored guest in every house that was worth entering. When I drove by the green ovals of the little parks, which you can’t enter without a private key, I experienced none of my old ambition to have a key too, and go in and mingle with the aristocracy sitting on wooden benches.