I told you Pip had thrown his coat to her over the tea-things; it had fallen on her lap with a jerk, and the contents of one pocket had been precipitated on to the tray.
A tobacco pouch, a fountain pen, and a pipe she had replaced hastily. A letter had fallen face upwards—even [106] ]in the confusion she had seen it was addressed to “Miss Mabelle Jones,” in her brother’s bold writing.
But the thing that had taken all the colour and life from her face, she had not put back in the pocket at all, when Pip had taken the coat. She held it at the present time in her tightly shut, trembling hand, and every minute the horror in her eyes deepened. Then she said, “Pip!” in a low, wailing voice, and opened her hand and looked again at the thing.
The tissue paper was still there, and on its whiteness, shining bravely up into the wild eyes above it, lay a little gold wedding-ring.
There was a step outside her door—Pip’s step; he had been to his room to change to dry things, and was coming back. For a minute he stopped, and Meg went paler than ever; then he went on, along the passage and down the staircase.
She could hear him in the lower hall,—could he be going out again? She started to her feet as the door banged, and went hastily over to the window. No; he had his old tennis cap on, and was going very slowly across the grass towards the river, his eyes searching the ground. He had evidently missed it already, and surmised it had fallen from the pocket, either as he carried his coat to the house or when [107] ]he flung it to Meg. She gave him just time to get down to the water, and then, with the small, terrible thing tightly held in her hand, she went almost blindly down the stairs and over the grass after him.
He was kneeling down just beside the tea-things, groping about in the long grass.
“Have you lost anything?” Meg asked, in a voice that seemed to have no connection with herself, so faint and far away it sounded.
“Er—only the stem of my pipe,” Pip said, a dull flush on his forehead.
He overturned a cup, spilt the milk into the biscuit barrel, and said something under his breath.