Knowing well it would not do, I gently pushed the bonnet towards his hand. Thus impelled, it slid down the polished slope of the varnished and unbaized desk, carried before it the light steel-framed lunettes , and, fearful to relate, they fell to the estrade . A score of times ere now had I seen them fall and receive no damage⁠— this time, as Lucy Snowe’s hapless luck would have it, they so fell that each clear pebble became a shivered and shapeless star.