Ariel wanted to cry, “Oh, Michael! It isn’t missing my father that makes me so out of things to-night. And please forgive me for not playing up when we owe you everything, my father and I,—and you are going away so soon! It isn’t grief. It’s something else. For I can’t be brave, the way Anne is brave. I am frightened, do you see?”
She was indeed frightened! For Ariel, like Anne, had a conviction that to-night things were to be decided between Hugh and Joan. She only said, however, calmly enough, conscious of the waiting silence of the others, “Grandam gave me this ring just to-night. The color is wonderful, I think.”
“And the setting! It’s a rare and beautiful setting! But it is a man’s ring! It cannot belong to you, my Ariel! It is much too heavy for this little hand.”
He continued to hold her wrist and stare down, fascinated, at the lovely ring.
Mrs. Weyman was leaning across the table, amazed. “Grandam gave you her aquamarine, Ariel! I hadn’t noticed you wearing it. But she values it above everything she possesses, except that pencil drawing of the hands. I don’t know what its association for her is, or why she always wears it. She’s avoided telling us. Did she give it to you, or just let you wear it, Ariel?”
“She gave it to me,” Ariel replied, but her own words, her answer to the simple question, rang in her ears like a knell. Her blood went icy. For suddenly she knew the significance of the ring, and the significance of Grandam’s having given it to her. And yet no one had told her. This ring had been worn on one of those pictured hands, on the hand that was to open the coach door for Grandam when she got out in Eternity. That holy hand had given the jewel to Grandam as its last act on earth. And now Grandam had passed it on to Ariel. And all Grandam had said was, “Here’s a keepsake to match your green feather.”
Father’s green feather.... Grandam’s and the Saint’s aquamarine! Oh, pray God Grandam hadn’t meant Ariel to understand a swift farewell in the casual, sacred gift. Pray God! Pray God! Did Grandam think she was about to die?
Chapter XXVIII
Ariel started to rise from her chair, her face gone wan and strange. But she sank down again. Her heart was beating leaden beats. How could she know that this ring had belonged to the possessor of those hands, now dust, and how could she know that Grandam’s time to die had come! It may have been some glance toward the pictured hands, as Grandam slipped the ring from her finger and gave it to Ariel, unnoticed then but impressed somehow all the same on Ariel’s memory, which let her know to whom the ring belonged. But the conclusion that Grandam had given it to Ariel because she was now to die—that was unreasonable. Ariel clutched her napkin in tense fingers and tried to be reasonable.
Mrs. Weyman was saying, “But it’s all right, my dear. It’s only that I’ve never seen Grandam separated from her ring before. Since she gave it to you, she wants you to have it. It is only another sign of her affection....”