But Uvo had broken off of his own accord.
"I think you'll be glad"—he was feeling in all his pockets—"quite glad if you do—" and his voice died away as he began feeling again.
"Lucky I wired to you to meet me at Richmond, wasn't it, Edie? Otherwise we should have been too late," said the accountant densely.
"Perhaps you are!" poor Uvo had to cry outright. "I—the fact is I—can't find it anywhere."
"You may have left it behind," suggested Berridge.
"We can call for it, if you did," said the girl.
There was something in his sudden worry that appealed to their common fund of generosity.
"No, no! I told you why I was going to Richmond. I thought I had it in my ticket pocket. In fact, I know I had; but I went with my sister this morning to get some flowers at Kingston market, and I haven't had it out since. It's been taken from me, and that was where! I wish you'd feel in my pockets for me. I've had them picked—picked of the one thing that wasn't mine, and was of value—and now you'll neither of you ever forgive me, and I don't deserve to be forgiven!"
But they did forgive him, and that handsomely—so manifest was his distress—so great their recovered happiness. It was only I who could not follow their example, when they had gone on their way, and Delavoye and I were hurrying on ours, ostensibly to get the Richmond police to telephone at once to Kingston, as the first of all the energetic steps that we were going to take. For we were still in that asphalt passage, and the couple had scarcely quitted it at the other end, when Delavoye drew off his glove and showed me the missing ring upon his little finger.
I could hardly believe my eyes, or my ears either when he roundly defended his conduct. I need not go into his defence; it was the only one it could have been; but Uvo Delavoye was the only man in England who could and would have made it with a serious face. It was no mere trinket that he had "lifted," but a curse from two innocent heads. That end justified any means, to his wild thinking. But, over and above the ethical question, he had an inherited responsibility in the matter, and had only performed a duty which had been thrust upon him.