She must have seen the covetous glare in my eyes. A look of
gratified spiteful complacency overspread her features, as she swept on
ahead and descended the stairs before me. I followed her to the
drawing-room door. She stopped suddenly, and murmuring something
unintelligible hurried back again.
Everybody was assembled there that I expected to see, with an addition.
Not a welcome one by the look on Tom's face. He stood on the hearthrug
conversing with a great hulking, high-shouldered fellow, sallow-faced,
with a heavy mustache and drooping eyelids, from the corners of which
flashed out a sudden suspicious look as I approached, which lighted up
into a greedy one as it rested on my rubies, and seemed unaccountably
familiar to me, till Lady Carwitchet tripping past me exclaimed:
"He has come at last! My naughty, naughty boy! Mr. Acton, this is my son,
Lord Carwitchet!"
I broke off short in the midst of my polite acknowledgments to stare
blankly at her. The sapphire was gone! A great gilt cross, with a Scotch
pebble like an acid drop, was her sole decoration.
"I had to put my pendant away," she explained confidentially; "the clasp
had got broken somehow." I didn't believe a word.
Lord Carwitchet contributed little to the general entertainment at dinner,
but fell into confidential talk with Mrs. Duberly-Parker.
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