"Wait a moment," said Harriet. "I think
I can assist you in this respect. Do you study
the bracelet a bit until I come to you."

She left the room, and remained away for a
little time. Dallas stood close by the table,
having lowered the gas-burners, and by their
light he closely inspected the rivets, the fastenings,
and the general form of the splendid ornament
he was so anxious to get rid of, idly thinking
how well it must have looked on his mother's
still beautiful arm, and wondering whether she
was likely soon to be obliged to wear the counterfeit.
His back was turned to the door by
which Harriet had left the room, so that, when
she came softly to the aperture again, he did
not perceive her. She carefully noted his attitude,
and glided softly in, carrying several small
implements in her right hand, and in her left
held cautiously behind her back a coat, which
she dexterously dropped upon the floor quite
unperceived by Dallas, behind the chair on
which he had thrown his. She then went up to
the table, and showed him a small pair of nippers,
a pair of scissors of peculiar form, and a
little implement, with which she told him
workers in jewellery loosened stones in their
setting, and punched them out. Dallas looked
with some surprise at the collection, regarding
them as unusual items of a lady's paraphernalia,
and said, gaily:

"You are truly a woman of resources, Mrs.
Routh. Who would ever have thought of your
having all those things ready at a moment's
notice?"

Harriet made no reply, but she could not quite
conceal the disconcerting effect of his words.

"If I have made a blunder in this," she
thought, "it is a serious one, but I have more
to do, and must not think yet."

She sat down, cleared a space on the table,
placed the bracelet and the little tools before
her, and set to work at once at her task of demolition.
It was a long one, and the sight was
pitiful as she placed jewel after jewel carefully
in a small box before her, and proceeded to
loosen one after another. Sometimes George
took the bracelet from her and aided her, but
the greater part of the work was done by her.
The face bent over the disfigured gold, and
maltreated gems was a remarkable one in its
mingled expression of intentness and absence;
her will was animating her fingers in their task,
but her mind, her fancy, her memory, were
away, and, to judge by the rigidity of the
cheeks and lips, the unrelaxed tension of the
low white brow, on no pleasing excursion. The
pair worked on in silence, only broken occasionally
by a word from George, expressive of
admiration for her dexterity and the celerity
with which she detached the jewels from the
gold setting. At length all was done—the
golden band, limp and scratched, was a mere
common-place piece of goldsmith's work—the
diamonds lay in their box in a shining heap, the
discarded turquoises on the table; all was done.

"What shall we do with these things."
asked George. "They are not worth selling—
at least, not now—but I think the blue things
might make up prettily with the gold again.
Will you keep them, Mrs. Routh? and some
day, when I am better off, I'll have them set for
you, in remembrance of this night in particular,
and of all your goodness to me in general."

He was looking at the broken gold and the
turquoises, thinking how trumpery they looked
now—not at her. Fortunately not at her, for
if he had seen her face he must have known—
even he, unsuspicious as he was—that she was
shaken by some inexplicably powerful feeling.
The dark blood rushed into her face, dispersed
itself over her fair throat in blotches, and made
a sudden dreadful tingling in her ears. For a
minute she did not reply, and then Dallas did
look at her, but the agony had passed over her.

"No—no," she said; "the gold is valuable,
and the turquoises as much so as they can be
for their size. You must keep them for a rainy
day."

"I'm likely to see many," said George, with
half a smile and half a sigh, "but I don't think
I'll ever use these things to keep me from the
pelting of the pitiless shower. If you won't
keep them for yourself, Mrs. Routh, perhaps
you'll keep them for me until I return."

"Oh yes," said Harriet, "I will keep them.
I will lock them up in my desk; you will know
where to find them."

She drew the desk towards her as she
spoke, took out of it a piece of paper, without
seeing that one side had some writing
upon it, swept the scattered turquoises into the
sheet, then folded the gold band in a second,
placed both in a large blue envelope, with the
device of Routh's last new company scheme
upon it, and sealed the parcel over the wafer.

"Write your name on it," she said to George,
who took up a pen and obeyed her. She opened
a drawer at the side of the desk, and put away
the little parcel quite at the back. Then she took
from the same drawer seven sovereigns, which
George said would be as much as he would require
for the present, and which he carefully
stowed away in his pocket-book. Then he sat
down at the desk, and playfully wrote an I O U
for the amount.

"That's business-like," said George, smiling,
but the smile by which she replied was so wan
and weary, that George again commented on
her fatigue, and began to take leave of her.

"I'm off, then," he said, "and you won't forget
to tell Routh how much I wanted to see
him. Among other things to tell him——However,
I suppose he has seen Deane since I have
been away?"

Harriet, was occupied in turning down the
gas-burner by which she had just lighted the
candle again. She now said:

"How stupid I am! as if I couldn't have
lighted you to the door first, and put the gas
out afterwards! The truth is, I am so tired;
I'm quite stupified. What did you say, Mr.
Dallas? There, I've knocked your coat off the
chair; here it is, however. You asked me
something, I think?"