“I have been so long looking for the purchaser, madam. First I trace it to one party, then to another, and at last to that dealer who would not remember to oblige me. But I found a way to reach him and made an arrangement. He gave me the number of this house, and madam’s name. I had great hopes that you would be willing to part with the shawl for the price you gave, as the owner wants it so much. I never, in all my experience, saw any one feel the loss of a pledge so keenly. So, as madam has a good heart, I can see that by her face, I am sure she will not drive a hard bargain with the poor man.” Mrs. Carter seemed restless and somewhat annoyed at this man’s eager pertinacity. At one of the principal dealers in such expensive articles, she had purchased one of those rare and most exquisite shawls, which are manufactured expressly for eastern potentates. These rich shawls are difficult to obtain, and precious among ordinary importations, as diamonds compared with meaner stones. She knew that there was not another shawl to compare with this one for sale in the city, and had happened to purchase it at a bargain. Now this man, whom she did not know, but who announced himself as a pawnbroker, who had once held the shawl in pledge, and sold it among other forfeited articles, was appealing to her, in a keen and pathetic way, to give it up, for the moderate price she had paid, because its former owner was driven almost frantic by the loss of it. Mrs. Carter, being a woman, was touched by this appeal; but from the same feminine reason, found her love of a bargain, and her ambition to possess something more rare and beautiful than her neighbors, opposing the kind impulse with peculiar force. When Eva entered the room, she felt a sense of support, and was almost ready to leave the decision to her, for she had already learned to depend on the young girl in most matters of taste. “Eva, dear, run up to my dressing-room, and bring a shawl you will find in my armoire. I want you to look at it, and help me decide about parting with it.” Eva ran up stairs, found the shawl, and came down with it falling in rich folds across her arm. “Ah, that is it,” cried the pawnbroker, eagerly rubbing his hands. “I should know the pattern among ten thousand. To think now that I should have known its value so little! It cuts me to the soul!” Mrs. Carter had taken the shawl, and was busy opening its marvelous folds, revealing the long slender palm leaves, in which the best tints of a rainbow were wrought with the toil and art seldom bestowed on the modern fabrics that flood our market. “Ah, it is so beautiful! I should hate to part with it,” said Eva, who had learned to estimate a creation like that in her life behind the counter. “You might search years without finding one like it.” “You hear?” said Mrs. Carter, looking irresolutely at the anxious pawnbroker. “Yes, madam, I hear; but if it is beautiful to a stranger, how much more so to the person who owned it?”