After dinner I had but a few minutes to wait. When I'd refused coffee, he, too, refused, and made an excuse to show me a room of which the correspondents were fond—a room full of old trophies of the forest hunt.
"Did you notice at dinner how I kept trying to get a good look at your left hand?" Curtis asked.
"No," I answered, "I didn't notice that."
"I'm glad. I was scared you'd think me cheeky. Yet I couldn't resist. I wanted to see whether Jim had given you the ring."
"The ring?" I echoed.
"The ring of our bet, the year before the war: the bet you knew about, that kept you two apart till Jim came over to France this second time."
"Yes—I knew about the bet," I said, "but not the ring. I—I haven't an engagement ring."
"Queer!" Jack Curtis puzzled out aloud. "It was a race between Jim and me which should get that ring at an antique shop, when we both heard of its history. He could afford to bid higher, so he secured it. Not that he was selfish! But he said he wanted the ring in case he met his ideal and got engaged to her. If he'd lost the bet the ring would have been mine. If he didn't give it to you, I wonder what's become of the thing? Perhaps his mother knows. Did she ever speak to you about Jim bringing home a quaint old ring from France, that time after his fever—a ring supposed to have belonged to the most beautiful woman of her day, the Italian Countess Castiglione, whom Louis Napoleon loved?"
"No," I said. "He can't have given the ring to his mother, or she would have told me about it, I'm sure. She's always talking of him."
"Perhaps it was stolen or lost," Curtis reflected. "Yet I don't feel as if that had happened, somehow! I trust my feelings a good deal—especially since this war, that's made us all a bit psychic—don't you?"