The Great Pearl Secret

								

his face, but she thought a muscle jumped in the arm that held her, and
that there was a sudden change in his tone.
"Do with it?" he echoed.  "Why, what should I do but keep it in the
bank waiting for the Lady of my Dreams?  I couldn't wear it round my
neck, you know!  But, well, I did get it out of the bank now and then,
to show to beautiful beings who begged to see it.  Once it was in a
Loan Exhibition for the benefit of something or other, I forget what.
The confession I have to make, though, is this: only two months before
I met the dearest girl on earth I was so hard up I'd have had to grind
a monkey-organ in the streets if I hadn't been engaged in fighting for
King and Country.  I'd had some beastly bad luck with a speculation an
alleged pal had let me in for, and honest Injun, I didn't know which
way to turn, until a chap I know offered me two hundred thousand francs
on the security of the pearls."
"Francs?" echoed Juliet.
"Yes.  The man's a Frenchman.  And the business was done in France.
He's a dashed good fellow in his way.  But it's a queer way.  He's a
kind of gilded, super money-lender.  His transactions are only with his
friends, and the interest he takes is fair and square: twenty per cent.
instead of sixty or so, as the sharks do--to my bitter knowledge.  With
what I got from Louis Mayen I paid my debts, and hung onto a bit, a few
thousands.  Then, two months later, I met you--and the fat was in the
fire!"
"How, in the fire?"
"Why, I made up my mind at first sight to grab you if I could----"
Juliet broke out laughing like a child, forgetful of her secret burden.
"Did you--really?  So did I you!"
"Bold hussy!"  He kissed her with passion.  "But it was worse for me
than you.  I'd just lost my chance of giving you your legitimate
wedding present--if you'd have me.  The day you said 'Yes', instead of
walking on air I could have thrown myself in the sea, I felt such a
fool."
"Silly boy!" cried the girl.  "Any real money-lender, or even your
super, gilded one, would have let you have all you wanted if you'd said
you were marrying Silas Phayre's heiress.  I mayn't know much about
business, but I know that!"
"And I mayn't be a saint, but I'm not a cad," Claremanagh capped her.
"I wouldn't go to a money-lender on the strength of being engaged to
you.  I don't say that if Louis Mayen had been in France then I'd not
have wheedled the pearls back from him, on the mere strength of
friendship, and an I.O.U., or some such arrangement.  He'd have trusted
me," Pat laughed; "anyhow, in the circumstances!  But you and I were
engaged a fortnight after the Armistice, you remember.  Just a week
before our own Great Day (yours and mine) Mayen went to Russia with a
lot of important Frenchmen of Hebrew blood, on a diplomatic mission.
He had a bad time in Petrograd.  He and his lot were stuck into the
prison of St. Peter and St. Paul, by the Bolchies.  I didn't know where