The thought of wearing the pearls, as in the letter which accompanied them he requested her to do, on Christmas night, was distasteful to her on account of the continuous flow of witticism she would be forced to meet from William, who already had revealed a new inventiveness on presenting the registered package to her, and had manifested open curiosity as to its contents, which she had failed to gratify. And she dreaded the cold criticism of Bobby's appraising eye. Bobby would possibly refrain from verbal comment, but his face would express the more. She locked the pearls away and decided that she would show them to no one; she would ignore the request that came with them. In any case they were too valuable to wear at a quiet dinner at home, at which the only guests would be Matilda and her husband, who, still in uncertainty as to his living, waited on in Wortheton in hopeful expectation. To wear the pearls in Ernest's presence, and suffer William's sly pleasantries unmoved, was more than she felt equal to. Ernest, through the medium of his wife, had expressed amazement at her engagement, which he attributed to worldly considerations. "She is incapable of appreciating the seriousness of marriage," he had told Matilda. "Her mind is light and inclines to frivolity, and material advantages." That his own inclination had been towards a comfortable income, was a point he was apt to overlook. Prudence found some difficulty in writing a sufficiently appreciative acknowledgment of her lover's gift. She hated the necessity for expressing a pleasure which she did not feel. "Your present is much too beautiful," she wrote. "I don't know how to thank you. I am overpowered. You give such wonderful things..." She added nothing about locking the pearls away, but left it to his imagination to picture her, as he had said he would do, shining in all her girlish beauty with his pearls about her throat. She determined to take them with her to Morningside when she went in April. If he wished to see her wearing pearls, she would gratify him then.