I've got a design against all your heads,"
he continued, imitating the cutting action of a pair of scissors with
two of his fingers, and raising his voice in high triumph. "It's a
splendid idea: I mean to give Madonna a Hair Bracelet!"
Mrs. Peckover and Mr. Blyth started back in their chairs, and stared at
each other as amazedly as if Zack's last words had sprung from a
charged battery, and had struck them both at the same moment with a
smart electrical shock.
"Of all the things in the world, how came he ever to think of giving
her that!" ejaculated Mrs. Peckover under her breath; her memory
reverting, while she spoke, to the mournful day when strangers had
searched the body of Madonna's mother, and had found the Hair Bracelet
hidden away in a corner of the dead woman's pocket.
"Hush! let's go on with the game," said Valentine. He, too, was
thinking of the Hair Bracelet--thinking of it as it now lay locked up
in his bureau down stairs, remembering how he would fain have destroyed
it years ago, but that his conscience and sense of honor forbade him;
pondering on the fatal discoveries to which, by bare possibility, it
might yet lead, if ever it should fall into strangers' hands.
"A Hair Bracelet," continued Zack, quite unconscious of the effect he
was producing on two of the card-players behind him; "and _such_ hair,
too, as I mean it to be made of!--Why, Madonna will think it more
precious than all the diamonds in the world.
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