Both earrings and brooch were of oxydized silver,
dark blue in colour passing insensibly into black. The pendants of the
earrings were in the shape of little fishes hanging upon little hooks
and with mobile little scales, which at the slightest movement made them
seem alive. Each of them had a pair of very tiny but very brilliant
diamond eyes. The brooch on the other hand represented a butterfly, also
with two sparkling diamond eyes; one of them was blue, a rare colour for
a diamond.
Henrietta was indeed pleasantly surprised.
There was not a line of writing along with them, but was there any
necessity for it? How simple, how nice it all was! How well he must know
her taste who had selected it! Her husband could never have hit upon
such an idea.
What should she say to her husband if he should notice them? But why
should she show them to anybody? She would not even put them on till the
last moment, just before she started on her journey. All day long she
was as happy as a child who is going to its first party; even in her
husband's presence she could not control her delight.
But Hatszegi never enquired why she was so joyous. On the day before the
entertainment he went with his wife to the town in question, where he
owned, not the castle, it is true, but a comfortable mansion of
considerable extent, whose first floor was rented by a mining engineer
and his family.
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