Sally stared at Pearl, color draining out of her cheeks and out of her sapphire eyes, until she was a pale shadow of the girl who had been glowing and sparkling under the sun of David's affectionate interest.
"I haven't seen your diamond bar-pin, Pearl," she said at last. "Honest, I haven't!"
"You're lying! I saw you stoop and pick something up in front of the sofa last night. I was crazy not to think of my bar-pin then, but I remembered all right this morning, when it was gone off this dress, the same dress I was wearing last night. See, David!" she appealed shrilly to the boy, who was looking at her with narrowed eyes. "It was pinned right here! You can see where it was stuck in! Look!"
David said nothing, but a slow, odd smile curled his lips without reaching those level, narrowed eyes of his.
"What are you looking at me like that for?" Pearl screamed. "I won't _have_ you looking at me like that! Stop it!"
Slowly, his eyes not leaving Pearl's face for a moment, David thrust his right hand into his pocket. When he withdrew it, something lay on his palm--a narrow bar of filigreed white gold, set with a small, square-cut diamond. Still without speaking, he extended his hand slowly toward Pearl, but she drew back, her eyes popping with surprise and--yes, Sally was sure of it--fear.
"Do you really want me to tell you?" David spoke at last, his voice queer and hard.
"No!" Pearl shuddered. "No! Does she--does _she_ know?"
"No, she was telling the truth when she said that she hadn't seen the pin," David answered, flipping the pin contemptuously to the kitchen table. "But next time I think you'd better put it away in your own room. And Pearl, you really must try to overcome this absentmindedness of yours. It may get you into trouble sometime."
Pearl shivered, seemed to shrink visibly under her fussy pink georgette dress.
"Oh!" she wailed suddenly, her face crumpling up in a spasm of weeping. "You'll hate me now! And you used to like me, before _she_ came! You--oh, I hate you! Quit looking at me like that!"
"Hadn't you better go back to church?" David suggested mildly. "Tell your mother you found your pin just where you'd left it," that contemptuous smile deepening on his lips.
"You won't tell Papa, will you?" Pearl whimpered, as she turned toward the door. "And you won't tell _her_?" She could not bear to utter Sally's name.