You say he's not so very well off. At any rate,
he wouldn't have given you a thing that cost fifteen or twenty
pounds--those diamonds aren't so small--when he only owed you ten."
"But he didn't owe it to me!" Sally interrupted.
"Very well, he didn't. Then why do you think he's sent you this?"
"Because he thinks he does."
"Very well, again; then why does he send you something that's worth
so much more?"
Janet folded her arms in a triumph of silence. For a long time Sally
could frame no reply. It had seemed, only an hour before, that she
would have been so willing to seize at any straw which the tide of
affairs should bring her, and now that the solid branch had floated
to her reach, she could not find the confidence to throw her whole
weight upon it. It was the letter that thwarted her; the letter that
warned her from too great a hope.
"But read the letter," she said at last. "Read the letter again. Would
he ever have written as abruptly as that if--if what you suggest is
right? He might have asked me to--to think sometimes when I wore it--"
"Why? Is he a sentimentalist?"
"My goodness! No!"
"Well, then, he wouldn't. That's a stock phrase of the sentimentalist.
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