"Being a woman," Mrs. Vanderlyn said slowly, "I could not withstand the temptation. I looked in. Within I saw—a magnificent diamond ring."
Still she had not reached the crux of what she had to say. Would the woman never come to the great point—would she never make the charge against his Anna definite and clear? "Well?" he said unhappily, and, as he said the word a resolution found birth in his brain. His little Anna! What if she had been tempted and had yielded? He would not let her suffer for it, as this cold and haughty woman evidently wished to have her suffer! He would ward disgrace from her—at any cost.
Carefully, so that the movement could not rouse suspicion in the mind of his exasperating visitor, he put his hand behind him and let it fall on the bag upon the table. Once on it, his fingers worked with skill and that precision which is natural to fingers trained by practice on a musical instrument until they seem to have a real intelligence, scarcely dependent on the brain.
"I knew for whom the dear boy meant that jewel," Mrs. Vanderlyn went on. "He had bought it as a present for me on my birthday, which occurs tomorrow."
Kreutzer nodded slowly, his fingers working, all the time, in Anna's bag. "Presents are sometimes made on birthdays," he admitted. "Well?"
"Happy in the thought that he had remembered me, I went out for my drive, leaving the box there on his table, just where I had found it. When I reached the house again I found a note left for me by your daughter, saying that she had decided upon going from my house forever, that someday she hoped I would forgive her—"
"What had she done?" said Kreutzer, in a dry voice, full of misery.
"Ah, that she did not say." Mrs. Vanderlyn paused now, with a fine sense of the dramatic. "But immediately I looked again for that box and ring and they—were gone!"
Kreutzer, pale, his forehead damp from perspiration of pure agony, as truly sweat of pain as any ever beaded on the brow of an excruciated prisoner upon the rack, looked at her with pleading eyes. "Gone! Madame, you do not think—"
She smiled a bitter little smile. There was, also, just a touch of triumph in it, such as small souls show when they are on the point of proving to another, even though a stranger, that they have been wrong in trusting someone, believing in some thing. "My dear sir," she said slowly, not from unwillingness to speak but to give emphasis, "what else can I think? No one but my son, myself and Anna had been near that room—"