of the list, the star of them all.

You see it's this way: Lord Harold Gray's bankrupt. He's poor
as--as Nance Olden. Isn't that funny? But he's got the family
jewels all right, to have as long as he lives. Nary a one can he
sell, though, for after his death, they go to the next Lord Gray.
So he makes 'em make a living for him, and as they can't go on
and exhibit themselves, Lady Gray sports 'em--and draws down two
hundred dollars a week.

Yep--two hundred.

But do you know it isn't the two hundred dollars a week that
makes me envy her till I'm sick; it's that rose diamond. If you
could only see it, Mag, you'd sympathize with me, and understand
why my fingers just itched for it the first night I saw her come
on.

'Pon my soul, Mag, the sight of it blazing on her neck dazzled me
so that it shut out all the staring audience that first night,
and I even forgot to have stage fright.

"What's doped you, Olden?" Obermuller asked when the curtain
went down, and we all hurried to the wings.

I was in the black dress with the white-bibbed apron, and I
looked up at him still dazed by the shine of that diamond and my
longing for it. You'd almost kill with your own hands for a
diamond like that, Mag!