When the serpent was unwound, there was a little weight at the end of the coil. A letter? A bomb? Perhaps only chocolate. This was thrilling and mysterious, but entirely delightful--a thing that could not possibly happen at home--at least, not with propriety. The weight turned out to be a morocco box wrapped in tissue paper. The man had evidently taken her for somebody else--a respectable somebody else, it was to be hoped; she had dropped into the middle of some romantic entanglement, or some dreadful Anarchist or Nihilist plot. Heavens! it might have been meant for her mysterious fellow-traveller, and contain a signal for the instant assassination of some distinguished statesman or royal person recognized through his disguise, or for the blowing up of the whole place. The spring tentatively and gingerly touched, the lid flew up, but--though she shut her eyes for quite two seconds--nothing whatever happened, nothing went off, nobody was killed; there was neither explosive nor written instruction inside--nothing but a thin gold chain, its delicate links separated at every inch by pearls or diamonds, daintily coiled on the violet velvet lining. Could it be poisoned, or charged with accumulated electricity to a deadly extent? A dainty toy it looked; she had seen and longed for one just like it at Spink's, not long ago. "Well, when the money-ship comes home," Arthur had growled; and that, of course, meant never. "Just look," she cried, holding it up in the sunshine. "I had no idea people threw things like this to strangers." "They don't," Dorris said grimly. "It was carefully aimed." "Then it can't be for me," she mused, and turned back to Agatha, who was reading the folded paper flung in the end of her coil, her hand shielding her face from the sun, which struck full upon her. Just then such volleys of confetti came broadside from a high car representing a ship that nothing but defence could be thought of, and the chain was slipped into a purse and forgotten. And when Ermengarde turned again to Agatha, she saw her, to her unspeakable amazement, bending over the side of the stand, speaking to the Spaniard--now dismounted and stopping on his way through a lane at the corner of the stand. This incident had not escaped Miss Boundrish, who smiled acidly at Ermengarde's look of surprise. "Now we can guess the true destination of the chain," she whispered.