The stately measure was trod in silence as usual, but he felt the dark eyes studying him all the time.  However, he could bear it better now that the deed was done, and she had voluntarily made him less to her than any gallant parading or mincing about the room.

‘So you bear the pearls, sir?’ she said, as the dance finished.

‘The only heirloom I shall take with me,’ he said.

’Is a look at them too great a favour to ask from their jealous guardian?’ she asked.

He smiled, half ashamed of his own annoyance at being obliged to place them in her hands.  He was sure she would try to cajole him out of them, and by way of asserting his property in them he did not detach them from the band of his black velvet cap, but gave it with them into her hand.  She looked at each one, and counted them wistfully.

‘Seventeen!’ she said;’ and how beautiful!  I never saw them so near before.  They are so becoming to that fair cheek that I suppose no offer from my—­my uncle, on our behalf, would induce you to part with them?’

An impulse of open-handed gallantry would have made him answer, ’No offer from your uncle, but a simple request from you;’ but he thought in time of the absurdity of returning without them, and merely answered, ’I have no right to yield them, fair lady.  They are the witness to my forefather’s fame and prowess.’

‘Yes, sir, and to those of mine also,’ she replied.  ’And you would take them over to the enemy from whom that prowess extorted them?’

‘The country which honoured and rewarded that prowess!’ replied Berenger.

She looked at him with an interrogative glance of surprise at the readiness of his answer; then, with half a sigh, said, ’There are your pearls, sir; I cannot establish our right, though I verily believe it was the cause of our last quarrel;’ and she smiled archly.

‘I believe it was,’ he said, gravely; but added, in the moment of relief at recovering the precious heirloom, ’though it was Diane who inspired you to seize upon them.’

’Ah! poor Diane! you sometimes recollect her then?  If I remember right, you used to agree with her better than with your little spouse, cousin!’

‘If I quarrelled with her less, I liked her less,’ answered Berenger—­who, since the act of separation, had not been so guarded in his demeanour, and began to give way to his natural frankness.

’Indeed!  Diane would be less gratified than I ought to be.  And why, may I ask?’

‘Diane was more caressing, but she had no truth.’

’Truth! that was what feu M. le Baron ever talked of; what Huguenots weary one with.’

‘And the only thing worth seeking, the real pearl,’ said Berenger, ‘without which all else is worthless.’

‘Ah!’ she said, ’who would have thought that soft, youthful face could be so severe!  You would never forgive a deceit?’

‘Never,’ he said, with the crystal hardness of youth; ’or rather I might forgive; I could never esteem.’