The Great Pearl Secret

								

it was possible that Claremanagh might "breeze in."  It would be like
him!  This thought was still in her mind when a door behind her opened.
She turned nervously, tucking the lip-salve into her gold mesh bag, for
just now the Duke was having a craze for baby complexions without
make-up.  But it was not the Duke.  It was a girl, standing in the
doorway between bedroom and salon.
"Hello, Emmy!" she said.
"Hello, Juliet!" said Emmy.  And suddenly she felt years older than she
had felt a moment ago.  Juliet Phayre was such a big baby!
The girl wore a pale pink chiffon thing which she probably considered a
dressing gown.  It was embroidered with wild roses and banded with
swansdown, and no practical person would have dreamed of keeping it on
for a shampoo.  Juliet, however, thought herself sufficiently protected
with a towel over her shoulders--a silvery damask towel under which her
bare, girlish arms hung down.  Over the towel streamed masses of hair
in long, wet strands, which must be bright golden-brown when dry.
These fell--weighted with water--nearly to her knees, and from their
curly ends drops poured like unstrung pearls.  She was so tall and
slender, and brilliant rose-and-white, that she would have looked to a
poet like Undine just out of her fountain.
"You extravagant thing," Lady West scolded, "to spoil a lovely boudoir
gown like that!"
"Simone gets it to-morrow as a perquisite, with all my old things,"
Juliet dismissed the subject.  "She said you'd been here an age, so I
thought I'd better come in.  I'll dry my hair before the fire,
presently we'll have tea."
So saying, she sat down tailor-fashion on a long, fat velvet cushion
which lay in front of the low fender.
"Evidently you're not expecting the Duke," laughed Lady West.
"No-o," said the girl.  "But I'm expecting a letter from him--or
something."
"You haven't got the pearls on show with your other presents, I see,"
remarked her friend.  "I don't blame you!  Of course, Parker is doing
the watch-dog act outside; and only your bestest pals come up.
Still, the pearls are frightfully valuable.  And you can never tell!
But do, do let me see them.  I'm dying to!"
"I haven't got them yet," Juliet confessed.
"Not got them?" gasped the elder woman.  "You're joking.  Why"--and she
laughed with great gaiety--"one marries Claremanagh for his pearls!"
"Does one?" Juliet took her up.  "I know whole populations of females
who'd give their pearls to marry him, for--himself!"
This told Emmy West that the bride-to-be knew she had been scratched,
and was ready to scratch back.  For an instant Emmy hesitated whether
to be sweet or sharp, and decided to compromise.  "By Jove, you are
in love, aren't you?" she said.
"I am," Juliet admitted.  "I don't care a rap about being a duchess.
That sort of thing seems--somehow old-fashioned since the war.  And I
don't think I ever was a snob, thank goodness."
Emmy wondered if this were another "dig."  She had been a Chicago girl,