"Oh, yes!" she forced herself to answer. "Aren't they _big_? Aren't they _blue_? I never saw any so-called 'blue pearls' so really blue as these." "All the same, you are disappointed," Pat judged, his eyes on her face. "Don't you think by this time I know your tones and your expressions? Out with it, Jule! Bless you, _I_ shan't be hurt. I didn't make the pearls, you know. And you're a spoiled pet of fortune, brought up from your babyhood to play with better toys than these. You could have had pearls as big as plums, in a rope to your feet, if you'd wanted 'em. Only your taste was too good. What's the matter with these baubles?" "Why," the girl hesitated, "if I must say what I think you know I _am_ supposed to be a bit of an expert, in my little amateur way, it seems to me these pearls aren't as lustrous as they ought to be. Perhaps they're 'sick'. They may need sea-water, or something. Yet they haven't the symptoms of 'dying' pearls. They haven't lost their colour. They've got almost too much--to look _real_." "They're real enough!" "Of course they _must_ be. And the clasp is charming, isn't it? An eye made of a blue sapphire, set in white diamonds, rimmed with tiny black ones; an eye like the design of your seal, except that this one looks to the right, and----" "To the _right_!" Pat caught the words from her mouth. "Impossible!" Juliet stared. "But it does. You may see for yourself." "Good God!" There was horror in his voice. Juliet could not understand. This scene began to feel like a queer dream. "What is the matter?" she asked. "Give me the thing!" She handed him the rope. He glared at the clasp as if the diamond and sapphire eye were a miniature head of Medusa. Then he turned to her with a dazed expression, still in silence. "You frighten me," she faltered. "You--you say you're an expert in pearls," he said. "How can you tell real ones from false?" "One very simple way is to touch them to the tip of the tongue," Juliet explained, bewildered. "Real pearls are always cold. False ones can be warmish. Besides, the surface feels different. And even if the weight is right----" "Test these," Pat said. The girl took back the gleaming blue rope, and lifted the largest pearls to her lips. "They are--false," she gasped, after an instant's pause. "You are sure?" "Yes. I am sure." CHAPTER IX THE EYE THAT LOOKED TO THE RIGHT The two stared at each other in silence, and both were pale. Juliet's mind was confused. "The pearls false!" She tried to hammer the words into her brain, and understand fully what the thing would mean for her and Pat. She thought of Louis Mayen, the "super money-lender," who had kept the pearls for months, and supposed that Claremanagh also must be thinking of him. "What a treacherous, horrible man!" she broke out, at last. The Duke stared, almost stupidly--if he could be stupid. "_Who_ is treacherous--horrible?" he stammered.