Where is the use of wearing them on such an expedition as that to a fortune-teller ?" "But why shouldn't I wear them ?" asked Sylvia, rather surprised.
"Well, in your place I should certainly leave anything as valuable as your pearls in safe keeping.

After all, we know nothing of this Madame Cagliostra, and Montmartre is what Parisians call an eccentric quarter." Sylvia Bailey disliked very much taking off her pearls.

Though she could not have put the fact into words, this string of pearls was to her a symbol of her freedom, almost of her womanhood.
As a child and young girl she had been under the close guardianship of a stern father, and it was to please him that she had married the rich, middle-aged man at Market Dalling whose adoration she had endured rather than reciprocated.

George Bailey also had been a determined man--determined that his young wife should live his way, not hers.
During their brief married life he had heaped on her showy, rather than beautiful, jewels; nothing of great value, nothing she could wear when in mourning.
And then, four months after her husband's death, Sylvia's own aunt had died and left her a thousand pounds.

It was this legacy--which her trustee, a young solicitor named William Chester, who was also a friend and an admirer of hers, as well as her trustee, had been proposing to invest in what he called "a remarkably good thing"-- Mrs.Bailey had insisted on squandering on a string of pearls! Sylvia had become aware, in the subtle way in which Women become aware of such things, that pearls were the fashion--in fact, in one sense, "the only wear." She had noticed that most of the great ladies of the neighbourhood of Market Dalling, those whom she saw on those occasions when town and county meet, each wore a string of pearls.