'Posted? But I delivered it by hand when I found that you were away on the twenty-second of September—the day I called.'
'I was not away. I did not go out of Melbourne for half a day during the whole of my visit.'
'Great heavens! what made that woman lie so infamously? Tell me, my darling, what was in the letter you got? You spoke of an unfinished one from some woman. Do you remember the words?'
Stella, roused by the shock of discovering this undreamt-of treachery, repeated, word for word, first, the unfinished letter in some woman's handwriting—then Anselm's, telling of its abrupt beginning and close, with its many erasures, one of them—that at the close—blotted, but not illegible.
'Oh, Stella, could you believe that I would write like that, and enclose such a letter, even if it had come? I would at least have seen you—but, then, you could not imagine that such a diabolical imposition was possible. But why did this woman, whom you visited as an equal, behave worse than a common thief?' he asked with gathering wrath as he thought of the misery Stella must have endured.
'She had her reasons, and she succeeded—she succeeded,' murmured Stella; and then she slowly rose up. The moment had come when he must know all.
Her gloves fell to the ground, and as he lifted them up a ring fell out of one and rolled under the table.
'Ah, careless little Liebchen, is this the way you let our ring slip off, with its tender old Italian motto? ... But this is not the ring I gave you, darling child?'
He smiled, but there was a growing fear in his face.
'No, Anselm—I wear that ring next my heart.'