Her brevity, cut even shorter by her accent, evidently was calculated to inform him that, although she had played, she didn't care much for his game. For a young person who could warm one up so one minute, she certainly could make one feel like an ice-crusher the next! Since that's what he was up against, however, he proceeded with all his surplus enthusiasm to crush ice.
"The sight of this heirloom takes one right back to the days of old, doesn't it, when ladies fair and gallants bold----"
"You wax poetic from hearsay, Mr. Pape? You don't look exactly old or wise enough to have lived in those good old days."
"Miss Lauderdale, no. I don't claim to have staked any 'Fountain of Youth.' In fact, I ain't much older or wiser than I look and act. But I've read a bit in my day--and night. The courtly Colonial gent, if I remember aright, first placed the left hand on the heart--so." Then he bent gracefully, not to say carefully, so that the seams of his satin straight-jackets should not give--thus. With his right hand he next snapped open his jeweled box and passed it around the circle of snufflers of _the_ sex, who would likely have swooned at the thought of a cigarette as at the sight of a mouse--in this wise.
Pape, who duly had pressed his heart, bowed with care, if not grace, and was in the act of pressing the catch, felt the box snatched from his grasp. In his fumbling, however, his thumb had succeeded. As Jane seized her treasure the lid sprang back. One look she gave into it, then swayed in the patch of lamplight very like the limp ladies he had been mentioning. A face of the pure pallor of hers scarcely could be said to turn pale, but a ghastly light spread over it. Her eyes distended and darkened with horror. A shudder took her. She looked about to fall.
"It is--empty! See, _it is empty_," she moaned.
Pape was in time to steady her into a chair. Aunt Helene hovered over her anxiously.
"What's gone wrong with you, childie? You're the one that's in a run-down state. Here's your box, Jane dear. Look, it isn't stolen at all. Pinch yourself. Waken up. Everything's all right."
But Jane did not return her relative's smile; clutched both fat arms of the chair with both slim hands; stared ahead fixedly, as if trying to think.