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It was here, somewhere in the neighborhood of this sentence of doubtful meaning, that Mrs. Herrick left them. In looking back, Flora could never recall the exact moment of the departure. But when she raised her eyes from the grass where they had been fixed for what seemed to her eternity she found only Kerr no, Chatworth standing there, looking at her with a grave face.
"The elder Chatworth, Lord Crew, is a bachelor, but, of course, the ring reverted to him on Chatworth's death." "And Lord only knows," the judge broke in, "how it got shipped with Bessie's property. Crew was out of England at the time. He kept the wires hot about it, and they managed to keep the fact of what the ring was quiet but it got out to-day when Purdie found it was gone.
She took in the presence of the paper, and the suppressed excitement of her companion's face seemed to absorb them through the large pupils of her light eyes, through all her smooth, pretty person, before she reached for an explanation. "What is the most extraordinary thing?" The query came bland and smooth, as if, whatever it was, it could not surprise her. "Why, the Chatworth ring!
And to-night it was not the picture exhibition, nor the function itself that elated her, but the fancy she had as she looked over the moving mass below her that the crowning excitement of the day, the vanishing mystery, hovered over them all. It was fantastic, but it persisted; for had not the Chatworth ring itself proved that the most ordinary appearances might cover unimagined wonders?
By this time Chatworth, still seated, had caught sight of it. "Hello," he said, "what sort of a thing is that?" It was a short, shabby, nondescript little figure, shuffling rapidly along the winding walk between the rose bushes. Now they saw the top of his round black felt hat. Now only a twinkling pair of legs.
It shook so that Flora saw the Chinaman steady it to drop in the ring. Then, folding his check miraculously small, enveloping it in the ragged piece of newspaper, the little man turned and shuffled from them down the gravel walk. Chatworth stood staring after him with his Idol in his palm.
The goldsmith nodded emphatically at each word, but when all was said he only reiterated, "Twenty thousand dollar." Chatworth gave Flora an almost shamefaced glance, and she saw with a curious twinge of jealousy that he was intensely excited. "Might as well have a pot-shot at it," he said; and sitting down on the edge of the fountain and taking out his check-book, rested it on his knee and wrote.
For, from the first the business had been sinister, from as far back as the tragedy the end of poor young Chatworth and his wife the Bessie, who, before her English marriage, they had all known so well.
Into the goldsmith's eyes came a lightning flash of intelligence, such as Flora remembered to have seen there when Farrell Wand, leaning on the dusty counter, had bidden him go and bring something pretty. He seemed to quiver a moment in indecision. Then he whipped his hand out of his sleeve and held it forth palm upward. This time it was Chatworth who cried out.
"Oh, you have a scent like a bloodhound. You haven't let go of that once since you started. He could have done it oh, easy but he went out eight, ten years ago." "Died?" Flora's rising inflection was a lament. "Went over the horizon over the range. Believe he died in the colonies." "Oh," Flora sighed, "then I shall have to fancy he has come back again, just for the sake of the Chatworth ring.
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