The Great Pearl Secret

								

leave me a decent pile.  Mayen will at once take steps to get the
pearls to me."
"But we'll be in New York," objected Juliet.  "How can Monsieur Mayen
send them without danger of their being stolen?"
"Trust him to arrange that," Claremanagh soothed her.  "There must be
lots of ways.  Besides, they'll be insured for their full value, which
is supposed to be--intrinsic, not sentimental--one hundred thousand
pounds.  What I hope is, they'll be in time for you to make a show in
your box at the opera--Metropolitan Opera House, you call it, don't
you?  You see, I've been reading up a guide book to New York!  And now
I've made all my explanations and excuses, my darling, you'd better
open the poor little box."
His arm still round her, the girl broke the jeweller's seals.  Inside
the white paper was a white velvet case, and inside the white velvet
case was a string of white pearls.  They were small, but good, and from
them depended an old-fashioned, open-faced locket containing an ivory
miniature of a beautiful boy.
"The pearls are from me," Pat said.  "The locket and miniature are from
my mother.  She used always to wear the locket.  And when she died,
eight years ago, one of the last things she did was to give it to me,
'for my bride'."
Juliet Phayre would not have been human if she had not forgotten, in
that moment, both Emmy West and Lyda Pavoya.

CHAPTER III
"TO MEET THE DUCHESS"
Mrs. Lowndes, Emmy West's sister-in-law, was giving a luncheon for the
Duchess of Claremanagh; and the Duchess was late.  Nine lovely ladies
(including the hostess) were waiting for her in the Futurist drawing
room of an apartment overlooking the Park.  It was not to all tastes a
beautiful drawing room, but it was expensive for all purses.  So was
the apartment; too expensive, Billy Lowndes' friends said, for his.  As
for the ladies, each one was beautiful, or her clothes were; for Nat
Lowndes had chosen her guests with the special view of impressing the
Duchess, whom Billy had tried to marry when she was Miss Phayre.
The invitations were for one-fifteen, and before one-thirty everyone
had arrived--except the Duchess.  By twenty to two the nine voices were
chattering with almost abnormal gaiety, but ears and eyes were secretly
on the alert.  Natalie Lowndes was not precisely in the Duchess' "set",
or if she was, moved on the chilled outer edge of it.  These women who
chatted in her startling salon would have preferred other engagements,
if they had not been asked "to meet the Duchess of Claremanagh."  Most
of them knew that Billy had desperately wanted Juliet Phayre, and that
Juliet had been at school with his sister, Lady West, now in London.
Their private opinion was that the Duchess had accepted for Lady West's
sake rather than Mrs. Lowndes'; and as the minutes lagged, they
wondered if the chief guest were purposely proving her slight esteem of
the circle.