confusion. I was engaged to be married when my father died; a kind of boy and girl engagement, I suppose, but our parents had liked it and I was—I was very much in love. Her father broke the engagement at once when he found what my prospects were. He was perfectly right. She was accustomed to every luxury, and she was little more than a child. It would not have been fair to her. We were allowed to see each other once more, and she was finally permitted to keep my ring—though she was not allowed to wear it or ever to see me again or write to me. She was to keep my ring until she felt she no longer wished it. She promised me—I made her promise this—that she was to feel herself absolutely free, and if the time should come when she might prefer to free me, she was to send me back my ring and I would understand. It has never come back to me. I may never be able to marry the woman to whom I am engaged, but I am, in this manner, bound to her, and so—I am not what is called a marrying man, Miss Ireland. As to your cousin, while you are right in thinking I should have been more careful, there has been nothing serious of any kind. She cares not a whit for me. It has been merely an amusement. She runs in here, in a childish way—as Rose does; but I appreciate that she is by no means a child, and I should not have allowed it to go on. I have said all this to her a dozen times, and was about to say it again to-night when I thought you were she—not quite so gravely as you would approve, perhaps. But, after all, there is no harm in anything she does; she is just a fascinating, wilful, beautiful little witch. It is hard to be grave with her, and she is—very engaging."
The clear gray eyes were looking up at him steadily, indignantly.
"If Delia is as a child to you, Mr. Courtney, if you are engaged to another woman, then why have you given this to my cousin? Was this—honorable?"
She drew from her bosom the end of her watch-chain, and detaching something from it, held it towards Courtney. As he stretched out his hand mechanically to receive it, she laid on his palm a ring—a superb blood-red ruby, held in a quaint arabesque setting, between two hearts formed of beaten gold and diamonds. Courtney stood for a moment motionless, looking down as if incredulously into his hand; then quickly lifting the ring nearer, he turned it over and over in his palm, handling it as one touches a familiar object. He looked up sharply, his brow knotted.
"When did this come?" he asked, abruptly. "Where did you find it?"
"On my cousin's hand, Mr. Courtney."
"Your cousin's hand!"
He turned to the little table where earlier he had flung down the handful of unassorted mail.
"I did sign for a registered package this afternoon," he said. "It should be here. I hardly looked at it. Rose was waiting—"
He broke off, standing silent by the table, his back to the room. When, finally, the ring still in his hand, he turned and came towards her. Miss Ireland looked up at him anxiously. There was no trace of emotion in his face or manner; both were reserved, grave, and quiet; they betrayed nothing.
"It is the ring I told you of," he said, simply. "It has come back to me. The design was my own. I thought I could not be mistaken. Over there on the table I find the outer wrappings of the registered package, the contents gone. Will you tell me again where you found this ring?"
"I—I found it—indeed, where I told you, on Delia's hand. And she—she told me herself it was a gift from you."
"From me? This ring! And no one has been in this room since I brought in the mail, except—"
He lifted his head as if struck by a sudden thought, and turning back once more to the little table, took up a small box lying back of the letters and papers. Opening the box, he shook out a tangle of miniature toy animals.
"Ah! I understand now," he said. "I think I understand."
And almost as he spoke the clock on the mantel struck the half-hour, and with the stroke, on the door behind Courtney came a familiar knocking.
Courtney moved softly across the room to Miss Ireland's chair.
"Sit here quietly," he whispered. "We must not frighten her. If I turn the back
