The Great Pearl Secret

								

perhaps engaging a lawyer to frighten the Polish siren.  Lyda wouldn't
be easy to frighten, Emmy imagined, admiringly.  (She, in fact, admired
the dancer so sincerely, that her own attempts at sirenhood were copied
from Pavoya.)  Even if Lyda had disgorged the booty, would there have
been time for it to arrive from across the Atlantic?  Only the opening
of that little parcel would show, and Emmy's jealous pain was
complicated by curiosity.
Still, she decided, it would be useless to wear out her welcome by
lingering.  The chances were that Claremanagh wouldn't break those
thrilling seals till she had gone.  Besides, Juliet was in a state of
suppressed fury, and was capable in that mood of banishing her with
rudeness.  In some moods, the girl was capable of anything!  So Lady
West "kissed air" in the neighbourhood of Miss Phayre's burning cheeks,
and accepted defeat with one sole satisfaction: If the pearls had
come--or if they ever came!--she had pretty well spoiled them for the
future Duchess.
"Au revoir, dearest child," she said.  "I shall be in church
to-morrow, of course.  Au revoir, Peter, and good luck in spite of
the Claremanagh curse.  I do hope it won't put on seven-league boots
and follow you to New York."
"Leather's too dear since the war for superannuated old curses to buy
seven-league boots," replied the Duke, unflatteringly prompt in opening
the door.
The pretty lady went to it with wormlike meekness, but turned on the
threshold.  "If I meet the Curse, I'll tell it to mind its business,"
she laughed.  "The Claremanaghs have had enough bad luck.  You'll
create a new record, working out your democratic notions in a new
country, with one or two old friends there to applaud them."
With this exit speech she put herself in charge of Parker, who would
ring up the lift for her.  The Duke shut the salon door, and turned to
the girl.  He didn't even say "Thank goodness, the woman's gone!"  He
seemed to have forgotten her existence.
"Heavens, what hair you have!" he exclaimed.  "I knew it must be
gorgeous, but I didn't dream of this.  To-night I shall dream of
it!  By rights, I oughtn't to have seen this show till to-morrow night,
ought I?  But I'm glad I have.  All your beauties bursting upon me at
once would be too much for my brain."
"Don't make fun of me," Juliet laughed, with a wistfulness rather
pathetic in so pretty and so rich a girl.
"Make fun of you!"  Claremanagh snatched her up from the low seat, and
crushed the yielding, thinly clad young body in his arms.  On the
sweet-scented, damp hair he rained kisses.  "Am I a wooden man?  Take
that--and that, to punish you!  Mavourneen--if it were to-morrow!"
Between warm joy and chilling doubt Juliet Phayre shivered.  If only
she could believe him--believe that he cared for her, and not for the
money!  She almost had believed--before Emmy West came.
The girl burned to tell "Pat" what Emmy had said and hinted.  If he