The Great Pearl Secret

								

as yours truly; yet never was there one since the days of pterodactyls
who could run to the price of a Tsarina's pearls; that is, in lucre.
My great-great-grandfather bought them with kisses.  But joking apart,
it's rather a romantic tale.  He was a soldier and offered his services
to Russia because he'd seen a portrait of the Tsarina, which the Prince
of Wales had, and fell in love with it.  Well, she fell in love with
him, too, at sight.  He wasn't bad to look at, judging from his
portrait----"
"Was he like you?" cut in Juliet.
Pat laughed.  "They say so.  When we can get those Pill people out of
Castle Claremanagh (their lease has a year to run) you shall tell me if
you find a likeness.  There was an 'affair' between the two; and
great-great-grandfather Pat (he was Patrick, too, like all the eldest
sons) had it politely intimated to him, through his friend Wales, that
he'd better come home--a marriage had been arranged for him.  He'd not
have stirred a foot if it hadn't been for his Love.  She begged him to
go.  There was a plot to murder him, it seems, and as for her, she'd
ceased to be very popular with the Tsar, her husband.  She made her
sweetheart promise to marry the English girl, and she gave him the rope
of pearls which since then have been called after her--the 'Tsarina's
pearls.'  They were for his wife, as a gift from her, so the girl
shouldn't hate the thought of their love."
"I should have hated it all the more!" cried Juliet.  "I wouldn't
have worn the things if I'd been his bride."
"Well, as my bride I hope you will wear them often.  They'll be
dashed becoming to your blondness, for the things are unique in one
way: they're blue; a hundred and eighty immense and perfectly matched
blue pearls.  Never has anything been seen like them, the expert
johnnies say."
"Was the Tsarina a blonde?" the girl wanted to know.
"A copper-headed blonde.  You shall see her miniature."
Juliet said nothing.  But she thought of Lyda Pavoya's head.  She had
never seen the Polish dancer, but she had heard her described: the
traditional "siren-green" eyes, white face, and red hair.  And she knew
that Emmy West modelled herself, so far as Nature permitted, on Pavoya.
"In the ordinary sense of the word, the Tsarina pearls aren't an
heirloom in our family," Claremanagh continued.  "But the first bride
who received them passed on the gift to her eldest son's bride.  So it
has gone on ever since.  The thing falls to the heir, or his wife; and
it's tacitly understood that neither the rope as a whole, nor even one
of the pearls, shall be sold.  Well, I came into the inheritance (if
you can call it that) seven years ago, when I was twenty-one.  I'm
afraid I'd have sold the bally thing more than once if I could have
done it in common decency.  But I couldn't.  So there you are!"
"What did you do with it?" Juliet ventured, half dreading the answer.
Her head was pressed close to Pat's shoulder.  She could not look up at