She was as
placid as she was on other, less important nights, far more placid than
she would have been if she had known that she was guarding not only my
jewellery, but a famous diamond necklace, worth at least five hundred
thousand francs.
There it was, under the lowest tray of my jewel box. I had felt
perfectly safe in leaving it there, for I knew that nothing on
earth--short of a bomb explosion--could tempt the good creature out of
my dressing-room in my absence, and that even if a bomb did explode, she
would try to be blown up with my jewel box clutched in her hands.
Saying nothing to Marianne, who was brushing a little stage dust off my
third act dress, with my back to her I took out tray after tray from the
box (which always came with us to the theatre and went away again in my
carriage) until the electric light over the dressing table set the
diamonds on fire.
Really, I said to myself, they were wonderful stones. I had no idea how
magnificent they were. Not that there were a great many of them. The
necklace was composed of a single row of diamonds, with six flat tassels
depending from it. But the smallest stones at the back, where the clasp
came, were as large as my little finger nail, and the largest were
almost the size of a filbert.
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