The Opal Vial [pp. 415-420]

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T ie aesthetic MIiss Harrington was
making her uisual rounds in
search of a bargain. Nothing in
silk, or satin, or ribbon, or even in bonnets, satisfied her exacting tastes. She
sought the unique in art and the perplexing in life. She had won countless
prizes, large and small, for solving ridldles of all kinds, and had been known to
N-orkl on one for three months, but had
never been known to give one up. Her
father said of her that from the time she
was a child in the throes of the stamp
collecting fever on through the mania
for odd coins, then for rare etchings and
effective bits of bric-a-brac, collecting
and solving enigmas had been her twinl
vocations. Her brother had unkindlv
interpolated at this point his usual jest
about the number of admirers' scalps
Xwhlichl dangled unheeded at her belt, and
her superb collection of broken hearts.
She had once dismissed his comments on
that subject by innocently agreeing that
an authentic specimen of a mnan's heart,
b)roken. would( indeed be a rare specimen,
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if one might ever find it. And the
feebler wit of the brother had been reduced to the strait of repeating his own
jest time after time in lieu of an answer
to hers. As she had the means and the
inclination to become a collector, and as
she had never known a man except her
father who met with her unqualified approval, much less moved her to affection,
her conscience was easy on both points.
She soon became an angel to the second-hland men of Chicago, an angel, it is
true, of that genus which furnishes the
money for struggling theatrical stars or
impecunious artists. It did not take
even the most fawning Israelite long to
discover that she was a connoisseur, for
while she never hesitated a moment
about the purchase of some genuine
relic, the promptness with which she discerned an imposition and the regal way
in which she disdained even a discussion
of its merits left nothing to be desired.
The shrewder dealers soon learned
that undue enthusiasm on their part only
produced additional suspicion on hers.
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