Sylvia Bailey disliked very much taking off her pearls.  Though she could not have put the fact into words, this string of pearls was to her a symbol of her freedom, almost of her womanhood.

As a child and young girl she had been under the close guardianship of a stern father, and it was to please him that she had married the rich, middle-aged man at Market Dalling whose adoration she had endured rather than reciprocated.  George Bailey also had been a determined man—­determined that his young wife should live his way, not hers.  During their brief married life he had heaped on her showy, rather than beautiful, jewels; nothing of great value, nothing she could wear when in mourning.

And then, four months after her husband’s death, Sylvia’s own aunt had died and left her a thousand pounds.  It was this legacy—­which her trustee, a young solicitor named William Chester, who was also a friend and an admirer of hers, as well as her trustee, had been proposing to invest in what he called “a remarkably good thing”—­Mrs. Bailey had insisted on squandering on a string of pearls!

Sylvia had become aware, in the subtle way in which Women become aware of such things, that pearls were the fashion—­in fact, in one sense, “the only wear.”  She had noticed that most of the great ladies of the neighbourhood of Market Dalling, those whom she saw on those occasions when town and county meet, each wore a string of pearls.  She had also come to know that pearls seem to be the only gems which can be worn with absolute propriety by a widow, and so, suddenly, she had made up her mind to invest—­she called it an “investment,” while Chester called it an “absurd extravagance”—­in a string of pearls.

Bill Chester had done his very best to persuade her to give up her silly notion, but she had held good; she had shown herself, at any rate on this one occasion, and in spite of her kindly, yielding nature, obstinate.

This was why her beautiful pearls had become to Sylvia Bailey a symbol of her freedom.  The thousand pounds, invested as Bill Chester had meant to invest it, would have brought her in L55 a year, so he had told her in a grave, disapproving tone.

In return she had told him, the colour rushing into her pretty face, that after all she had the right to do what she chose with her legacy, the more so that this thousand pounds was in a peculiar sense her own money, as the woman who had left it her was her mother’s sister, having nothing to do either with her father or with the late George Bailey!

And so she had had her way—­nay, more; Chester, at the very last, had gone to great trouble in order that she might not be cheated over her purchase.  Best of all, Bill—­Sylvia always called the serious-minded young lawyer “Bill”—­had lived to admit that Mrs. Bailey had made a good investment after all, for her pearls had increased in value in the two years she had had them.

Be that as it may, the young widow often reminded herself that nothing she had ever bought, and nothing that had ever been given her, had caused her such lasting pleasure as her beloved string of pearls!