Read Online The Pride of the Peacock by Victoria Holt - Free Book Online

there and everyone’s gouging like made. I was caught up in it. It was my luck to hit on Pride of the Camp.”
    “Do you sell them?” I asked.
    He was thoughtful for a moment.
    “Well, that would seem to be the object, but there sometimes comes a stone that no matter what it can bring you, you just can’t sell. You get a sort of feeling for it. It belongs to you and you only. You’d rather have it than all the money in the world, and that’s plain straight.”
    “So all these you are showing me are stones which you felt like that about?”
    That’s it. Some are there for their beauty and some for Other reasons.
     
    Look at this one here . See the green fire in it? That cost me my leg. ” He shook his fist at it ” You cost me dear, my beauty,” he went on, ‘and for that reason I keep you.
    She’s got fire, that one. Just look at her sitting there. She cares nothing for me. She says, “Oh, if you want me, take me but don’t start counting the cost.” I call her Green Lady, for that was the name of a cat I once had. I’m rather fond of cats. They’ve got a sort of disdainful pride that I like. Have you ever noticed the grace of a cat? How it walks alone? It’s proud. It never cringes. I like that.
    This cat I had was called Lady. It suited her, that name. She was a lady, and her eyes were as green as the green you see in her namesake there. So that’s why I won’t let her go, though she cost me my leg and you might think I wouldn’t like to be reminded. There she was glinting at me in the candlelight . and I had to have her though the roof fell in and crippled me. “
    I took up the Green Lady in my hands and studied her. Then I laid her gently back in her soft velvet case.
    “And look here. Miss Jessie. Look at this heart-shaped cabochon. See the violet in it. It’s Royal Purple, this one. Look at the colour. Fit for a royal crown she is.”
    I was fasdnated, and he opened more boxes and I saw a variety of stones from the milky kind flashing their reds and greens to the dark blue and black variety with their stronger colours.
    He talked about them all, pointing out their qualities, and I was caught up in his enthusiasm.
    One box he took out was empty. It was smaller than the others, for it was meant to “cushion one single stone, and in the centre of the black velvet was a hollow somehow almost accusing in its emptiness. He stared at it in a melancholy way for some moments.
    What was there? ” I asked.
    He turned to me. His eyes had narrowed, his mouth hardened and he looked murderous. I stared at him, astonished by this change of mood.
    “Once,” he said, ‘the Green Hash at Sunset was there. “
    I waited but said nothing. His jaw protruded and his mouth was set and angry.
    “It was a specially beautiful opal?” I ventured.
    He turned to me, his eyes blazing. There was never such a beauty,” he cried.
    “No, never such an opal in the whole world. It was worth a fortune, but I would never’ have parted with it. You’d have to see it to believe this, but you’d know it if you did. The green flash … it wasn’t there all the time. You had to watch for it. It was the way the light caught it
     
    . and the way you held it. it was something about you as well as the stone. “
    “What happened to it?8 ” It was stolen,” he said.
    “Who stole it?”
    He was silent. Then he turned to look at me, his eyes narrowed. I could see how the loss of the stone upset him.
    “When was it stolen ?” I prompted.
    “A long time ago.”
    “How long?”
    “Before you were born.”
    “And all that time you never found it?”
    He shook his head. Then he snapped the box shut. He put it back in the safe with the others, and when he had locked the safe he turned to me and laughed. But there was a slightly different note in his laughter than there had been before.
    “Now,” he said, ‘we’re going to have some tea. I told them to bring it precisely at four. So let us go back there. ” He pointed to