The young man looked with a critical expression upon its contents. “Yes,” he admitted at length. “I do not care for cameos myself, though if size is a criterion of value it should be a magnificent one. The Marquise, I suppose?”
The girl nodded as she snapped to the case. “She says it is an heirloom. But I like violets better than heirlooms.”
“And what has Gilbert sent you—no, I see it on your finger. May I look?”
She held out her hand without answering, and the firelight caught the single magnificent ruby as she did so. Her companion did not take her hand.
“That,” he said gravely, “is a royal gift. I wonder still more at my presumption in making so worthless an offering, for my flowers won’t even last, like my aunt’s cameo.” And in his tone there was faint but unmistakable bitterness.
“But while they last they are better, and when they are dead you can bring me some more. I sometimes think,” went on the girl a trifle feverishly, fastening a handful of the violets in her breast, “I sometimes think that flowers have souls as we have.”
“I don’t think that they have anything so annoying,” returned the young man. “You would not like them so much if they had. . . . May I have one or two back again?”
She held out a few of the dark blossoms, and he put them silently into his coat, looking the while not at her, but at the ruby on her finger.
“You are standing all this time,” he said abruptly when he had finished, “and it grows cold here. Shall we talk a moment by the fire? I must not stay long.”
The girl moved away at once. A little shiver had indeed gone over her, and she had quite lost the colour of a few moments ago, and more besides. “You are going to the King, perhaps?” she hazarded over her shoulder as he followed her to the fireplace.