Then Esther began putting back the gold again in the little bag which had held it. When she had drawn the strings and wrapped it in its outer covering of brown paper my eye fell on the other square-shaped parcel. "What is this?" I asked. "Oh, Hilda," said Esther, rather guiltily, "Mr. Benson thought we would not sell both _parures_ till we saw what one would fetch! He guessed the stones were valuable. So I have brought back yours." Well, for the moment I felt nothing but vexation, which quite put out of my mind the fact that it had been rather a wrench to give up the sapphires. "You wretched, mean girl!" said I. "You know it was my place to give the sapphires, seeing what Aline had done for me. You should have kept yours. What use are jewels to me, seeing that even if we were asked to balls and such things I would have no place there?" "Hush, hush, Hilda!" said Esther in her gentle way. "Your jewels may be wanted later; and in any case mine were the more valuable, and brought in the bigger sum." Now I'm afraid this makes us seem rather unnatural, for girls, by nature, love their pretty things; only, you see, as we were both well on in the twenties, and had never had an opportunity of wearing jewels, and never seemed likely to have, the things were not of so much account in our happiness. Besides, money was wanted so sorely that the old jewels counted for very little by comparison. "I shall never need mine, never!" said Esther, with conviction. "And in any case mine are yours," added I. Then we went down to Aline and spilled the money in her lap. We were a little nervous about acting on our own responsibility, so we blurted the story out in a great hurry; and then, when Aline would have held up horror-stricken hands at the loss of the sapphires, we simply cried out, "It is for Pierce, you know, for Pierce," and so silenced her. We kept from Pierce the secret of how the Dublin doctor's fee was paid, but all the same he was vexed and disturbed when he heard that we had sent for him. The great man came and went, and left us sadder than before. Whatever hopes we had had from his visit were dissipated in thin air after he had gone. "I can give you no hope of your brother's ultimate recovery," he had said to Aline. "Constant and tender care may keep him with you a little while, but the mischief is too deep-rooted for our skill to reach." He had looked at her compassionately out of his stern gray eyes and pressed her hand in silence. After all, we had known it all the time, had known we were only buoying ourselves up with faint hopes. "How long?" said Aline. "Perhaps a twelvemonth," said the doctor, "perhaps not so long."