But her reflection flashed back at her from the glass, smooth, stern, unsmiling, as if her features had been sculptured in marble.
Below Fortieth Street there was the shop of a jeweller she sometimes went to with Mrs.Fowler in that lady's despairing quest for suitable wedding presents at moderate prices; and something in the kindly, sympathetic face of the clerk who waited on them made Gabriella decide suddenly to trust him.

As she unwrapped the tissue paper rather nervously, and keeping back the necklace, laid the brooch and the bracelet on the square of purple velvet he spread out on the counter, she raised her eyes to his with a look that was childlike in its appeal.
Again she thought of the morning on which they had surreptitiously taken her silver mug, hidden in Mrs.Carr's gray and black shawl, to the shop of old Mr.Camberwell.
"How much might I get for these?
I have worn them only a few times.

They do not suit me," she said.
For a minute the clerk looked at her reflectively, but without curiosity; then lifting the trinkets from the square of velvet, he passed behind a green curtain into an adjoining room.

After a short absence, in which she nervously examined an assortment of travelling clocks, he came back and told her that they would give her four hundred and fifty dollars for the two pieces.
"The stones alone are worth that," he added, "and, of course, they will have to be reset before we can sell them." "May I have the check now ?" "Shall we send it to you by mail ?" "No, I must have it now.

I want it this afternoon--immediately." He yielded, still with his reflective but incurious manner; and when she left the shop a quarter of an hour later the check was in her little bag beside the amethyst necklace.