And Sybil fastened her woful eyes on the woman's face, and begged: "Mrs. Stivers, will you bring a jeweler here to my room, as quickly as possible?"
"A—a—what?" stammered Stivers, "a jeweler—no, I can't leave you to go away over——"
"But," the girl interrupted, "anyone will do—any working jeweler. Right in the next avenue there is a little shop—you won't be gone more than fifteen minutes. You must, indeed you must!"
"O-o-oh!" thought Stivers; "she wants to get rid of that opal, now all the damage is done." Aloud she warned: "If you're going to try to do any business, you don't want a little tu-penny-ha'penny creature like that to deal with. Well! well! I'm going—but suppose the bell rings? Yes, I'll hurry!"
White and worn-looking, Sybil fell back upon the pillow, her tumbled dark hair clouding over her brows, her hot eyes staring before her, and every nerve tense, waiting for the "E-e-extray! e-e-extray!" at whose sound her world of love would crumble to nothingness.
Had she or had she not heard Stewart gasp "The word—the ruby—?" If she had, then the word must have had an immense significance for him, and suddenly her dumb, inert despair was broken by an intense longing to know what the word was that even rapidly approaching death had not driven from his recollection. For Sybil did not try to deceive herself. Anyone hearing that awful breathing must have realized that it meant a pierced lung, and she had been hopeless from the first. She felt that the explanation given by Thrall and Roberts was not true—that the shooting had not been accidental; but she supposed it had been the motiveless act of a drink-maddened man. For Jim Roberts had never breathed a hint—drunk or sober—of the miserable fate of his young sister, still less of his piteous passion of love for herself. So, in the absence of reasonable motive, she charged the dreadful deed to drunkenness.
Stivers had eagerly seized upon the cue given by rumor, and declared that Sybil had been shopping, and was going toward the theatre, when, etc., etc.; and she had carefully drilled her mistress in this story, before the arrival of Mrs. Van Camp.
And now the unhappy girl lay there straining her ears for that cry of "Extra!" that she so dreaded, and tormenting herself with thoughts of what she might have said and done yesterday, had she not been so stupefied with terror. At last she heard Stivers opening the door, and presently she was showing in a sandy-haired, hooked-nosed young man, with thick red lips and an appraising eye, that seemed at a glance to put a price upon each article in the room. She took the glittering diamond heart from her neck, and, placing it in the man's hand, asked him to remove the back. She would not listen to his proposal to take it to his shop—it must be done there, even at the risk of scratching the gold. Scratch or dent it, if he must, but open it he should! At last the back came off, and the man remarked: "I think there's something engraved here." But Sybil's hand-clasp covered the inscription. "Wait in the other room," she commanded.
She bolted the door, flew to the window, and, catching the light upon the metal, read the word she had worn upon her breast three years—the word Stewart said made the sole value of the gem—read and fell upon her knees, and buried her face in the pillow and sobbed and cried: "I understand you better now, dear heart!" and kissed again and again the four little letters that formed that one significant word, "Wife."
An hour later the expected cry arose in the street. Hoarse bawling went up one side and down the other, and Sybil knew the man who had been her idol, dearer, more precious than the whole great world, he whose love had been as the very breath of life to her, was gone away forever! And, lying with the locket pressed against her lips, she breathed: "Wife, you said, dear heart? Then your widow now, and as loyal in the shadow of your death as I was in the sunlight of your life!"