"Then you have been quarrelling, I suppose. I wonder if it was about the usual thing—one of my sex?"
"It was. I may say as much to you. In fact it was about Miss Denis—he treated her shamefully."
"What makes you think so?"—opening her eyes very wide, and shutting up her fan.
"Because he was engaged to her at Port Blair. He told me so. And when she was left penniless, he jilted her for this rich widow."
"He told you that he was engaged to Helen? Oh," drawing a long breath, "never!"
"Yes, and showed me a ring she had given him."
"Again I say, never, never, never!"
"My dear Mrs. Durand, there is no good in saying, never, never, never, like that. The ring he exhibited, was one that I had given Miss Denis myself!"
"Oh, sets the wind in that quarter!" mentally exclaimed the matron; "I thought as much." But aloud she replied, "Was it a curious old ring, without any stones, that was stolen from her the night of the ball?"
"It was the ring you describe. But it was not stolen, for she gave it to Quentin when he went to the Nicobars as a 'gage d'amour.' I expected that he would have married her as soon as possible after her father's death; indeed, I understood that he was returning from Camorta with that intention. But you see I have been so completely out of the world, that I heard nothing further till I met Quentin and his wife at the Academy to-day; and he calmly informed me that he had never seriously contemplated marrying Miss Denis, and that the Andamans and London are quite a different pair of shoes! Pray, do you call that honourable conduct?"