A String of Beads

"A String of Beads" is a short story written by W.Somerset Maugham in 1943. William Somerset Maugham is the world-famous novelist. He`s universally acknowledged as a short-story writer. His fame in this realm began with the book of short stories entitled “the Trembling of the Leaf” (1921) and continued with increasing momentum. His skill in creating vivid and original human characters is combined with beauty and refinement of language and style.It is actually a rather satirical story. The story of Miss Robinson was related from one friend to another over dinner. The plot is simple: the author shows the conversation between him and a woman whose name is Laura. She told him a very interesting story about the governess Miss Robinson, who worked in Livingstone’s house. Miss Robinson was a nice young woman of twenty or twenty-one, rather attractive and soft spoken. She was governess to a family who happened to be throwing a dinner party when one of their guests canceled at the last minute. In order to make up the numbers they asked Miss Robinson to fill in. She was invited to the dinner at the last moment one of the guests couldn’t come. Dinner table conversation turned to the cost and quality of a set of pearls worn by another guest, Mary Lyngate. She was quite pleased with herself and made it a point to show off her eight thousand pounds pearls to Count Borselli, whose knowledge of gems was vast. Although expensive, the Count was not overly impressed with Mary Lyngate's set of pearls, but he was appreciative of the set Miss Robinson was wearing. He thought that it cost fifty thousand pounds, but Miss Robinson said that she bought it for fifteen shilling. Nobody believed her, everybody thought that she is a robber or something like that. Suddenly two men came into Livingstone’s house and they wanted to talk with Miss Robinson. When she came back to the guests the necklace was gone. She said that those two men were shop assistants and they made a mistake (they