"Why, Carolyn!" exclaimed a middle-aged lady, hurrying by the servant, "isn't this odd about Rodney's ring?"
"Very," answered the girl. She held the papers in her hand and did not raise her eyes as she spoke.
"I do wonder what he'll say," went on her mother. "I do wonder if he still cares. How upset he was! And how curious that he should have lost the ring just before the engagement was broken! It did seem almost like a forerunner."
Mrs. Ffolliott held the trinket in her hand. Her son was standing beside her still, with his hands in his pockets. He was watching the ring somewhat as he would have watched it if his mother had been likely to devour it.
"You know Devil took it, of course," answered Carolyn, without raising her eyes. "There's no other way to account for its being in the wall there."
"It always seems so profane to speak of the crow in that way," murmured Mrs. Ffolliott.
Whereat her son frankly exclaimed, "Oh, marmer, don't be a jackass! That's the crow's name, you know."
"But he ought never to have been named in that way. I objected to it from the first."
"Pooh!"—this from Leander.