‘To Magdalen!’
‘Yes. I, too, was surprised at first. And then I seemed to comprehend that too. It was for the sake of old times, when we were young together. He and Magdalen in a cool, curious sort of way, always understood one another; and when he was over here, he several times spoke to me about her, and seemed distressed at the idea of the great change and reverse that had come over her. “She is not a high-minded woman,” he said to me once, “but she has had every hope crushed, and has lived in a kind of tomb with that old woman all the best of her life.” So that was the way he took, I suppose, of expressing his sympathy.’
‘It is wonderful,’ said Eleanor, in a low voice, feeling humbled, puzzled, and ashamed. This view of Magdalen’s life had never intruded itself into her mind. And it was as if she heard a voice echoing in the air about her, ‘Judge not!’
‘Yes, it is wonderful, and very humbling to me. And to you also, he left this ring.’
He took a case from his breast-pocket, and gave it to her. It contained a ring set with a large pearl of unusual size and beauty, surrounded by brilliants, in a fine and delicate small pattern.
‘He wished you to wear it always,’ said Michael in a low voice. ‘This was in a private letter to me, half finished, which he must have left amongst his other papers when he came down here with Otho, just before that wedding. He said it was more like his idea of you than anything he had ever seen.’
Eleanor was weeping silently as Michael placed this ring upon her hand.
‘Why did he think of me in that way?’ she whispered, between her tears. ‘It was so wrong, so unlike the truth. It makes me afraid. I shall always feel that I am a renegade when I look at it.’
‘It made him a great deal happier, at any rate,’ said Michael, gently. ‘And now, Eleanor, something else. I saw Otho while I was in town.’
‘Yes?’ she said, in a slow, reluctant whisper.