Who knew of this secret drawer, which opened by pressing a certain little
gilded face on the panel?...All her friends, of course: Aileen, Sibyl,
Alice, Olive, Janet, Helene....Unthinkable to have a secret drawer in an
old Italian cabinet which had belonged to some Borgia or other, and not
exhibit it to one's chosen friends.
She had even shown it to Gora, but to no one else but Mortimer. She had
kept his love letters in it for a time, written while the family was
applying the polite methods of the modern inquisition at Rincona, They
had remained there, forgotten, until her mother's death, when she had
remembered the secret drawer as a safe hiding place for her keys and
jewels; which, with her mother's, had formerly reposed in the safe under
the stairs.
It was a deep drawer and when she was in town held the few valuable stones,
reset, that she had inherited from her mother, besides the fine pieces
she had received as wedding-gifts; when all the old friends of the family
out-did themselves, and not a few of the less distinguished but more
opulent, whose floors Alexina had graced while her mother slept. Her pearl
necklace had been the present of her more intimate group of friends.
Alexina was not a little proud of her collection of jewels, although she
seldom wore anything but her pearls. She had left it when she went abroad,
in the safe deposit vault, and she sent a quick terrified glance in the
coffer's direction like that of a cornered rat.
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