CHAPTER XXIII.
TRUTH AND FIDELITY.
Hester and her party returned to the Grange in time for lunch. All the way back Antonia was silent. They drove home by another road; they passed a bog of extreme desolation, and some larger and wilder briars than ever; they skirted a melancholy common, but Antonia never made an observation; her whole gaze was turned inward; she was looking so intently at the picture of a sorrowful child, that she was blind to everything else. Susy was decidedly in a bad temper; Hester's brave heart was full of aches, doubts, and fears; and Annie was again going back to that unsolved problem of how she was to get back the ring for Mrs. Willis.
The return party was, therefore, a dull one; although no one noticed the other's dulness, each being so occupied with her own thoughts.
Mrs. Willis was to leave the Grange immediately after lunch, and Hester and Annie were to accompany her to Nortonbury in the landau.
Just as the carriage drove up to the house, Mrs. Willis remembered the ring and spoke to Annie.
"My dear," she said with a smile, "I am leaving the house without my ring. It is too late now to send it to Paris to be copied; but as I see you never wear it, I may as well take it back with me to Lavender House. You know, my love, how much I value that ring. I feel quite lonely without it."
Annie's pretty face turned pink.
"But I should like to wear it before I go back to school," she said, "and you promised that I might have it during the holidays."