“Oh, what are clothes, or money, or anything, in comparison with Stella!” Katherine said.
“Not much to you that don’t have to pay for them,” he said. “I shan’t pay for them. Go and pack up the rags, don’t you hear? and bring me the diamonds. She thinks we’ll send ’em after her.” And here the curse again. “She shan’t have one of them, not one. Go and do what I tell you, Katie. God damn her and her----”
“Oh, papa, for the sake of everything that is good! Yes, I will go--I will go. What does it matter? Her poor little frocks, her----”
“They cost a deal of money all the same. And bring me the diamonds,” Mr. Tredgold said.
And then there suddenly flashed upon Katherine a strange revelation, a ludicrous tragic detail which did not seem laughable to her, yet was so----“The diamonds,” she said faltering, half turning back on her way to the door.
“Oh, forgive her, forgive her! She never could have thought of that; she never could have meant it. Papa, for God’s sake, forgive her, and don’t say--_that_ again. She was wearing them all at the ball. She was in her ball dress. She had no time to change--she----”
He seized and shook her savagely as if she had been confessing a theft of her own, and then rose up with his habitual chuckle in his throat. “George, she’s done me,” he said. “She’s got her fortune on her back. She’s--she’s a chip of the old block, after all.” He dropped down again heavily in his chair, and then with a calm voice, looking at Katherine, said tranquilly, “God damn her” once more.
It was afterwards discovered that Stella had calculated her elopement in a way which justified most perfectly the unwilling applause elicited from her father--that she was a chip of the old block. She had over-decorated herself, as had been remarked, it now appeared, by everybody at the ball, on the night of her flight, wearing all the diamonds she had got from her father as an equivalent for her lover--and other things besides, everything she had that was valuable. It was ridiculous enough to see a girl blazing in all those diamonds; but to have her pearl necklace as well, adjusted as an ornament on her bodice, and bracelets enough to go up almost to the elbow, was more absurd still, and Katherine, it now appeared, was the only person who had not observed this excess of jewellery. She remembered now vaguely that she had felt Stella to be more radiant, more dazzling than ever, and had wondered with a sort of dull ache whether it was want of heart, whether it was over-excitement, or what it was which made her sister’s appearance and aspect so brilliant on the very eve of her parting from her lover. “Partings which press the life from out young hearts.” How was it possible that she could be so bright, so gay, so full of life, and he going away? She had felt this, but she had not noticed, which was strange, the extraordinary number of Stella’s bracelets, or the manner in which her pearls were fastened upon the bosom of her dress. This was strange, but due chiefly perhaps to the fact that Stella had not shown herself, as usual, for her sister’s admiration, but had appeared in a hurry rather late, and already wrapped in her cloak.