The Great Pearl Secret

								

other's eyes, each waiting for the other to speak.  Neither heard a
sound at the door until a respectable voice--such a voice as is never
possessed save by a British butler or valet--announced "His Grace the
Duke of Claremanagh."

CHAPTER II
THE EXPLANATION
A perfectly charming young man came in--a young man so delightful to
look at that it seemed almost too much that he should be a duke.  With
that merry brown face (the war had left a scar across cheek and
temple), those Celtic grey eyes, that jet-black hair, that "figure for
a fencer," and above all that engaging grin of his, the merest Nobody
might hope to make his mark as Somebody.
"Breezing in" (as Emmy had put it), he smiled his nice smile that
brought a dimple like a cut line into each thin, tanned cheek.  The
smile was for Juliet, whose velvet throne was opposite the door, and
for her he waved aloft a small, sealed white parcel.  Then he saw Lady
West, and his expression changed.  As the saying is, his "face fell,"
but in half a second he had controlled his features.
"How do you do?" he enquired.  His voice was as pleasant as his grin,
but there was a slight stiffness in his tone for the red-haired
war-widow.
"I'm going strong, thanks!  Going in every sense of the word," Emmy
assured him.  "I should have taken myself off before now, only Juliet
pretended not to be expecting you.  Of course, the day before the
wedding is supposed by old-fashioned folk to be close time for
brides, where their loving bridegrooms are concerned, and so----"
"I'm not old-fashioned," said Claremanagh.
"Rather not!  I've every reason for knowing that.  We all have.  But
Juliet had some story about a 'bad luck' superstition.  I thought you
were the last man to be superstitious, Irish as you are, but it didn't
sound like a joke----"
"It wasn't a joke.  I'm as superstitious as the deuce about one or two
things," the man confessed.  "Juliet wasn't 'pretending' but"--and he
turned to the girl--"I had to come.  There was something I didn't want
to explain in a letter, and--hang 'bad luck!'  It's a cross dog that
would dare bite us."
As Emmy West saw the look he gave Juliet, she felt as though her heart
had been sharply pinched between a thumb and a finger.  She had
believed till now that his "superstition" was an excuse for spending
his time with someone whose society he preferred to the bride's.  Yet
here he was, bouncing in like a bomb, with that eager light in his
eyes, and in his hand a packet which might be the pearls!
When Juliet explained that there "was a reason" why Claremanagh
"couldn't give his present till to-day," an exciting thought had
tumbled into Emmy's head: What if Lyda Pavoya had refused to return the
pearls he'd been teased into lending her, and had taken them to New
York, where she was now dancing?  Emmy visioned the poor Duke
frantically cabling, the moment he had secured the American heiress; or