‘And where are you going now, Nell?’ he asked, as she disengaged herself from his clasp.
‘To my home—back to Panty-cuckoo Farm,’ she replied.
‘Ah, it is you, then, who live at Panty-cuckoo Farm? Did you not stop Lady Bowmant’s cobs as they were running away this morning.’
‘What! they have told you too. What an absurd fuss they make of nothing. The lady, Mrs Lumley, was at the farm this afternoon, worrying me about it.’
‘Mrs Lumley!’ he ejaculated, for though Nora had not informed him of her visit, he knew the real Mrs Lumley had not been there. ‘What was she like?’
‘A slight, willowy-looking young woman, with quick, brown eyes and pointed features. She was very kind, but she teased me so about taking a reward for doing nothing at all. Why, I didn’t even stop them. They stopped of themselves. All I did was to get myself rolled over in the dust. By the way,’ continued Nell, as a sudden thought struck her, ‘are you very intimate with Mrs Lumley, Vernie?’
‘By no means. Why do you ask?’
‘Because when I told her I couldn’t accept money at her hands, she took a ring off her finger and tried to put it on mine. And it was your ring—the gipsy ring set with sapphires—I recognised it directly, and I thought I should have gone mad with puzzling my brain where she got it and if you had given it to her. Did you?’
‘Given my sapphire ring to Mrs Lumley? Most certainly not,’ replied the earl, who guessed at once that his sharp-witted little wife, in order to obey his injunction not to disclose her real name, had borrowed the other woman’s. ‘By Jove, that was cool of her. I remember now she was fooling with my ring last night and put it on her own finger for a piece of fun. But to offer it to you. Well, I wish you had taken it. She would have looked very foolish when I asked where it was gone, wouldn’t she?’
‘Oh, Vernie, I couldn’t have touched it. It would have burned me. The dear ring I had so often played with myself. I have been crying all the afternoon for thinking of it.’