All this sudden acquaintance and somewhat intimate relation between us two seemed to afford no real pleasure either to Belknap or Orme. For my part, with no clear reason in the world, it seemed to me that both Belknap and Orme were very detestable persons. Had the framing of this scene been left utterly to me, I should have had none present at the fireside save myself and Ellen Meriwether. All these wide gray plains, faintly tinged in the hollows with green, and all this sweeping sky of blue, and all this sparkling river, should have been just for ourselves and no one else.
But my opportunity came in due course, after all. As we rose from the ground at the conclusion of our meal, the girl dropped one of her gloves. I hastened to pick it up, walking with her a few paces afterward.
"The next time we are shipwrecked together," said I, "I shall leave you on the boat. You do not know your friends!"
"Why do you say that?"
"And yet I knew you at once. I saw the ring on your hand, and recognized it—it is the same I saw in the firelight on the river bank, the night we left the Belle."
"How brilliant of you! At least you can remember a ring."
"I remember seeing the veil you wear once before—at a certain little meeting between Mr. Orme and myself."
"You seem to have been a haberdasher in your time, Mr. Cowles! Your memory of a lady's wearing apparel is very exact. I should feel very much nattered." None the less I saw the dimple come in her cheek.
She was pulling on her glove as she spoke. I saw embroidered on the gauntlet the figure of a red heart.
"My memory is still more exact in the matter of apparel," said I. "Miss Meriwether, is this your emblem indeed—this red heart? It seems to me I have also seen it somewhere before!"