"This is no doublet," said Jardine, taking the gem into his hand. "This is a genuine and very perfect stone of a very rare type—the pigeon's blood ruby."
As he looked at it he was impressed with the antique aspect of the ring; the setting was in gold of several different tints—green, red, yellow in two shades. He had not given much attention to ornaments of this order, but he knew that this method of setting was antiquated, not to say antique. He thought of the incongruity with the sordid little show—the high dive, Wick-Zoo, the Ferris Wheel. More than ever the conviction that the gem was stolen took possession of him. He suffered suddenly a qualm of conscience. He felt that the clerk was of limited experience and needed a warning. He ought not to be suffered unnecessarily to lose his money and involve himself.
"It is so fine, so rare, and so valuable that I am very sure it must be stolen. I don't say by whom, or when."
"Oh, Mr. Jardine," said the clerk, quite self-sufficient. His cheek reddened. He was blushing for the imputation. "Don't you think you are quite a little too suspicious?"
"Perhaps—perhaps! At all events you are warned," said Mr. Jardine, as he walked past the safe, around the desk, and out of the office by the door, rather than informally through the window as he had entered.
The clerk looked after him with no very friendly eyes, then he snapped the old ring in its dingy leather case, and locked it in the safe with Mr. Jardine's careful warnings. The value of the jewels ascertained he was prepared to lend the amount of transportation upon it; should he not be repaid he would profit enormously, and he was altogether willing to take the risk that however in the vicissitudes of his life the showman had come by the ring it was honestly owned.
Before the hack started for New Helvetia—it was indeed standing in front of the door—Frank came fuming up into his mother's room, where she, his sister, and his cousin were putting on their hats, preparatory to the journey. The young girls were fresh and bright again in their white dresses, which had, indeed, been sent to the laundry to be pressed and now showed as unwrinkled and perfect as if the stiff linen skirts and dainty little embroidered jackets were donned for the first time. The embroidered frills of their lingerie hats shaded, yet did not shadow, their fair faces, which showed no trace of the fatigue and excitements of yesterday, save that Lucia seemed a bit pale, and her eyes were larger and more appealing than usual. They were putting on their long silk gloves, now and then turning to eye each other from head to foot, for they entertained an enthusiastic mutual admiration, and were wont to point out a hair awry, or a line out of plumb with a serious rebuke, as of sacrilege.
Mrs. Laniston was not ill-pleased to be getting back to New Helvetia, but she regarded the outing as a highly successful break to the monotony. She could not enter into Mr. Jardine's sentiments in reference to the little fair; she had noticed his impatience with its grotesqueness and shortcomings, and in the privacy of the domestic circle had commented adversely. Did he think it was the Paris Exposition? she had demanded sarcastically of her daughter and niece. There is a sort of leniency of judgment peculiarly becoming to the highly bred and highly placed. Mrs. Laniston realised, for example, that the little village hotel was not the finest type of house of entertainment in all the world, but one was fairly comfortable there, and she seemed courteously unaware that there was aught better or more pretentious in New York or London, so long as she was under its hospitable roof. To be easily entertained with the best attainable was an instinct with her, and when Frank, his boyish face red and his scanty frown drawn above vexed and troubled eyes, paused with his hands in his pockets, complaining, "I do declare, that fellow Jardine bullyrags the life out of me," she was predisposed to be her son's partisan, and to discriminate against some ultra-fastidious prejudice of Mr. Jardine's of the sort which, if regarded, would already have destroyed every vestige of pleasure which the humble little outing could afford. She whirled half around from the bureau, where she was standing before the mirror putting on her wide black hat, holding it with one hand, while with the other she thrust a hat pin tentatively back and forth through the structure, seeking to find a steady grip in her masses of grey-blond hair.
"In the name of pity!" she ejaculated, gazing inquiringly at him.
"Ye-es," he whined, "anybody would think I was born yesterday, and couldn't find my way to the hall door there."