My tone lost its triumphant ring, and I finished in cold, distant, embarrassed accents.
"I have only," said I, "to execute my commission and hand the box and its contents over to you." And, thus speaking, I laid the necklace in its case on the corn bin beside the duchess.
The duchess said nothing at all.

She looked at me once--just once; and I wished then and there that I had listened to Gustave de Berensac's second thoughts and left with him at ten o'clock in the morning.

Then having delivered this barbed shaft of the eyes, the duchess sat looking straight in front of her, bereft of her quick-changing glances, robbed of her supple grace--like frozen quicksilver.

And the necklace glittered away indifferently between us.
At last the duchess, her eyes still fixed on the whitewashed wall opposite, said in a slow emphatic tone: "I wouldn't touch it, if it were the crown of France!" I plucked up my courage to answer her.

For Marie Delhasse's sake I felt a sudden anger.
"You are pharisaical," said I."The poor girl has acted honorably.