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 £55 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!

But on this pleasant June afternoon, in deference to her determined friend's advice, she took off her pearls before starting out for Montmartre, leaving the case in the charge of M. Girard, the genial proprietor of the Hôtel de l'Horloge.

CHAPTER II

With easy, leisurely steps, constantly stopping to look into the windows of the quaint shops they passed on the way, Sylvia Bailey and Anna Wolsky walked up the steep, the almost mountainous byways and narrow streets which lead to the top of Montmartre.

The whole population seemed to have poured itself out in the open air on this sunny day; even the shopkeepers had brought chairs out of their shops and sat on the pavement, gaily laughing and gossiping together in the eager way Parisians have. As the two foreign ladies, both young, both in their very different fashion good-looking, walked past the sitting groups of neighbours—men, women, and children would stop talking and stare intently at them, as is also a Parisian way.

At first Sylvia had disliked the manner in which she was stared at in 

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