"Yes. But I do not know whether you can get a very good idea of it in these shifting lights."
He took the case from his pocket and, lifting out the ornament, gave it into her hands. It was fashioned of half a dozen uncut diamonds in a setting of the most delicate and exquisite filigree.
"Beautiful!" she exclaimed, turning it over and looking at it more closely. But the attention she was bestowing upon it was a mere seeming. She was thinking, or rather attempting to think, but her heart was fluttering wildly, her whole impulsive nature seemed to impel her to the action she was meditating.
"Cresswell," she lifted a face white as a snowdrop to his, "will you make an exchange with me? Will you give me this amulet and take mine?"
"Perdita!" he cried, "you do not--" his voice broke.
"Yes, I do," she exclaimed, "it is not a wild whim, a caprice on my part. I have been thinking about it all day, ever since this morning."
"This morning!" sharply; looking at her keenly, quickly. "Ah," with a long breath, "it was this morning that Hewston drove poor Isabel to your house to prevent the duel between Gresham and myself." He laughed, but it was dreary mirth. "Hewston is a most imaginative fellow. I have a railway deal on which I spoke of to him as a duel. And so, you were going to sacrifice yourself in order to make quite sure that I would spare Eugene. Oh, rest content, Perdita. He is quite safe from my poignard or pistol. Never fear."
It seemed to her that the satire in his voice bit into her soul. With a great gasp of relief she realized that the car had stopped before her door. "Oh, take your amulet," she cried, "since you will not have mine." She almost threw it at him.
He thought that she was angry and sullen as she walked up the steps and into the house without a word to him, and with the barest inclination of the head. In reality, she was striving hard to control her sobs.
The hour which Dita had set for her appointment with Cresswell Hepworth was twelve the next morning, consequently she was not only surprised but perturbed when Eugene's name was brought to her a little after eleven.
He looked haggard, she thought, as if he had not slept, but his eyes were brighter than usual.
"Good morning, Queen of the May," he cried, coming forward to take both her hands in his as she came through the doorway. "Did you know, by the way, that this is May day? Ah," his eyes fastening themselves on the crystal amulet gleaming against her white gown, "you have it still. That was what disturbed me and drove slumber from my eyelids during the long night. He is a strong man, a very able and masterful man and he wants that amulet and you, Dita, and I feared--oh, you know how things appear in the dead of night, what monstrous and fantastic ideas come to one."