She thought of the master if he chanced to learn how she had been gossiping, and her sentence was cut short in the midst.
"Yes, Mary! You were saying?" cooed the persuasive visitor, and Mary succumbed again and told him of that night when a shadow moved into the trees and footprints were left in the gravel outside the library window, and the master looked so strangely in the morning. Her visitor was so interested that once she began it was really impossible to stop.
"How very strange!" he murmured, and there was no doubt he meant it.
"But about the master's ring, sir—" she began.
"You say he looked as though he were being watched?" he interrupted, but it was quite a polite and gentle interruption.
"Yes, sir; but the funny thing about losing the ring was that he never could get it off his finger before! I've seen him trying to, but oh, it wouldn't nearly come off!"
Again he sat up and gazed at her.
"Another mystery!" he murmured. "He lost a ring which wouldn't come off his finger? By Jove! That's very rum. Are there any more mysteries, Mary, connected with this house?"
She hesitated and then in a very low voice answered: