"That is a question we cannot answer," rejoined Mr. Ferris, astonished at her heat, while Lawyer Orcutt, moving forward, attempted once more to recall her to herself.
"Imogene," he pleaded,—"Imogene, calm yourself. This is not a matter of so much importance to you that you need agitate yourself so violently in regard to it. Come home, I beseech you, and leave the affairs of justice to the attention of those whose duty it is to look after them."
But beyond acknowledging his well-meant interference by a deprecatory glance, she stood immovable, looking from Dr. Tredwell to Mr. Ferris, and back again to Dr. Tredwell, as if she sought in their faces some confirmation of a hideous doubt or fear that had arisen in her own mind. Suddenly she felt a touch on her arm.
"Excuse me, madam, but is this yours?" inquired a smooth and careless voice over her shoulder.
As though awakening from a dream she turned; they all turned. Mr. Byrd was holding out in his open palm a ring blazing with a diamond of no mean lustre or value.
The sight of such a jewel, presented at such a moment, completed the astonishment of her friends. Pressing forward, they stared at the costly ornament and then at her, Mr. Orcutt's face especially assuming a startled expression of mingled surprise and apprehension, that soon attracted the attention of the others, and led to an interchange of looks that denoted a mutual but not unpleasant understanding.
"I found it at your feet," explained the detective, still carelessly, but with just that delicate shade of respect in his voice necessary to express a gentleman's sense of presumption in thus addressing a strange and beautiful young lady.
The tone, if not the explanation, seemed to calm her, as powerful natures are calmed in the stress of a sudden crisis.
"Thank you," she returned, not without signs of great sweetness in her look and manner. "Yes, it is mine," she added slowly, reaching out her hand and taking the ring. "I must have dropped it without knowing it." And meeting the eye of Mr. Orcutt fixed upon her with that startled look of inquiry already alluded to, she flushed, but placed the jewel nonchalantly on her finger.
This cool appropriation of something he had no reason to believe hers, startled the youthful detective immeasurably. He had not expected such a dénouement to the little drama he had prepared with such quiet assurance, and, though with the quick self-control that distinguished him he forbore to show his surprise, he none the less felt baffled and ill at ease, all the more that the two gentlemen present, who appeared to be the most disinterested in their regard for this young lady, seemed to accept this act on her part as genuine, and therefore not to be questioned.