Wych Hazel sat down and pulled off her gloves, and then the glittering fingers went diving into her pocket after chestnuts.
"Well?" she said,?"what now? There is a big one?try that."
"I used to like chestnuts once," said Josephine looking at it. "I wonder if there"ll be fun in anything ever any more for me?"
"Depends a good deal upon where you look for it," said Miss Kennedy, biting her nut. "Are you playing pendulum still, for pity"s sake?"
"Pendulum? No. I"m fixed. I"ve accepted John Charteris."
"Have you!" said Hazel, thinking that her business interview had been just in time. "How much down, Josephine? and how much on bond and mortgage?"
"What do you mean?"
"The trouble is, you can never foreclose," said Hazel. "Are the diamonds satisfactory?"
"You are not," said Josephine energetically. "Now be good, Hazel! I came to you, because I thought you were the only creature that would have a little feeling for me. Everybody else says it"s such a grand thing."
"Well, I _have_ some feeling for you, and so I don"t say it. Much more feeling than patience. Why do you sell yourself, if you do not like the price, Josephine Powder?"
"What can one do?" said the girl disconsolately.
"Let me see the first instalment," said Hazel. "Is it paid in?"
"I don"t know what you mean," said Josephine. "I tell you, they were all at me, and said I should be such a fool if I let it slip; and that I should be very happy;?but I don"t feel so."
"Not when everybody says you are?" Hazel enquired with slight scorn.
"Of course one likes to have other people think one is happy," said Josephine; "you don"t want to have them pitying you. I thought I should feel better when I was engaged and the whole thing settled.
I wish people could live without getting married!"
"Well," said Wych Hazel, "there is one thing I could not do without,?if I had to marry John Charteris."
"What is that?"
"A pocket pistol."
"A pocket pistol, Hazel! He isn"t as bad as that. What"s the matter with him?"
"Just a trifle. You do not love him."
"They said that would come," said Josephine dolefully.
"By express, from the land of nowhere," said Miss Wych nibbling her nuts. "Marked "Very perishable!!!" "?
"But I don"t find that it comes."
"No," said Hazel coolly, "that land is a good way off. Isn"t it cold work waiting all alone with the diamonds?"
Josephine displayed a magnificent finger. But she looked at it with no reflection of its light in her eyes. "You speak very coolly," she said, then letting her hand drop. "I thought you would feel for me somehow."
"I tell you I do, or I should not take the trouble of pinching you to see if you have any feeling left for yourself. Does not that ring make you shiver?"
"Sometimes. But what can I do, Hazel? It may as well be John Charteris as anybody else, as long as one can"t please oneself. One must marry somebody. You know one _must!_"
"Look at them," said Hazel. "As cold and hard as he is. Flashing up nothing deeper than the pocket they came from."
"There is no fault in the diamonds," said Josephine sulkily. "They ought to be hard. And these are beauties. And Charteris isn"t harder than other people, that I know of. It is only that?I don"t want to marry him. And he is in an awful hurry. If it was a long way off, I wouldn"t mind so much."
Wych Hazel dropped the chestnuts.
"Josephine," she said gravely, "do you see these rings on my hands?"
"Yes. I have seen them and admired them often enough. There"s a splendid emerald though. I never saw that before. O Hazel!" the girl cried suddenly. "It"s on _that_ finger!"
The hands were something to look at, in their glitter or strange old- fashioned rings, with many-coloured stones and various settings.
Only a close observer would have noticed that the emerald alone was a fit.
"Every one of all the eight is a betrothal ring," Hazel went on, not heeding; "every one has been a token between people who chose each other from all the world. They were not all rich, you see,?
here is a poor little silver hoop among the diamonds. And they were not all happy; for this ruby has seen a death-parting, and the pearls are not whiter than the face that had waited for twenty years.
But not one ring has the stain of a broken troth, nor the soil of a purchase. The people suffered, they waited, they died,?but they never so much as thought of any one but each other, in all the world!" Wych Hazel folded her hands in her lap again, looking at Josephine with eyes that were all alight.
"But _that"s_ yours," Josephine went in impatiently. "Who put it on?"
The girl"s accent was of more than curiosity.
"There are several of them you have never seen before," said Hazel.
"Josephine, do you understand what I say to you? People starve to death upon diamonds."
"Ah well, but do tell me!" said the girl, with a curious mixture of coaxing and distressful in her tone. "Do tell me who it was, Hazel. I just want to know."
"You just want shaking, I think," said Wych Hazel. "I did not say anybody put it there. And I thought you wanted to talk of your own affairs? If not, I will go and attend to my guests."
"You are very cruel," said Josephine, quite subdued. "Just tell me if it was?Stuart Nightingale?"
"No I shall not. You have nothing to do with Mr. Nightingale. You belong to Mr. Charteris."
"You put me off!" cried Josephine, laying her face in her hands for a moment. "It don"t matter. I can find out some other way; there are ways enough."
She looked towards the opening where gleams of colour could now and then be seen flitting among the trees. Wych Hazel laid one little hand on her shoulder.
"Josephine," she said, "I wish you would break this off!"
"What?"
"Any sort of engagement with John Charteris."
"I can"t," said the girl drearily. "They all want me to marry him.
There"s be an awful row if I broke it off now. And what difference does it make? If you can"t have what you would like, all the rest is pretty much one thing. It"s a bore; but one may as well get all out of it one can."