I was interrupted by the entrance of Clara.
‘If you gentlemen don’t want us any more, we had better go,’ she said.
I left Charley to answer her, and went back into the next room. Mary stood where I had left her, mechanically shifting and arranging the volumes on a shelf at the height of her eyes.
‘I think this is your ring, Miss Osborne,’ I said, in a low and hurried tone, offering it.
Her expression at first was only of questioning surprise, when suddenly something seemed to cross her mind; she turned pale as death, and put her hand on the bookshelves as if to support her; as suddenly flushed crimson for a moment, and again turned deadly pale—all before I could speak.
‘Don’t ask me any questions, dear Miss Osborne,’ I said. ‘And, please, trust me this far; don’t mention the loss of your ring to any one, unless it be your mother. Allow me to put it on your finger.’
{Illustration: “I THINK THIS IS YOUR RING, MISS OSBORNE."}
She gave me a glance I cannot and would not describe. It lies treasured—for ever, God grant!—in the secret jewel-house of my heart. She lifted a trembling left hand, and doubtingly held—half held it towards me. To this day I know nothing of the stones of that ring—not even their colour; but I know I should know it at once if I saw it. My hand trembled more than hers as I put it on the third finger.
What followed, I do not know. I think I left her there and went into the other room. When I returned a little after, I know she was gone. From that hour, not one word has ever passed between us in reference to the matter. The best of my conjectures remains but a conjecture; I know how the sword got there—nothing more.
I did not see her again that day, and did not seem to want to see her, but worked on amongst the books in a quiet exultation. My being seemed tenfold awake and alive. My thoughts dwelt on the rarely revealed loveliness of my Athanasia; and, although I should have scorned unspeakably to take the smallest advantage of having come to share a secret with her, I could not help rejoicing in the sense of nearness to and alone-ness with her which the possession of that secret gave me; while one of the most precious results of the new love which had thus all at once laid hold upon me, was the feeling—almost a conviction—that the dream was not a web self-wove in the loom of my brain, but that from somewhere, beyond my soul even, an influence had mingled with its longings to in-form the vision of that night—to be as it were a creative soul to what would otherwise have been but loose, chaotic, and shapeless vagaries of the unguided imagination. The events of that night were as the sudden opening of a door through which I caught a glimpse of that region of the supernal in which, whatever might be her theories concerning her experiences therein, Mary Osborne certainly lived, if ever any one lived. The degree of God’s presence with a creature is not to be measured by that creature’s interpretation of the manner in which he is revealed. The great question is whether he is revealed or not; and a strong truth can carry many parasitical errors.