She was asking questions such as Elithe had not expected, and for a moment she shook like a leaf, and turned so white that Paul feared she was going to faint. Clarice had the ring upon her own finger, turning it round and round as she talked, and the indelicacy and bad taste of appropriating it to herself so soon struck Elithe forcibly and disarmed her of all fear of Clarice.
“She’s a fool,” Miss Hansford thought, but she said to her niece: “Tell her all you know, if she wants to hear it.”
“Yes, tell me,” Clarice rejoined.
Thus abjured, Elithe began: “I put the ring on his finger. It was never on mine. I did not know he had given it to me until it was too late to return it. I could never wear it. I only cared for your brother as a friend,—never could have cared for him otherwise.”
Clarice looked puzzled, and said: “That’s queer. Tell me how you came by it and where you first saw him. I know something from his letter to you which I found in his valise. Here it is.”
She held Jack’s letter towards Elithe, who took it from her, and with a voice and manner which would not have shamed her aunt, said, slowly: “You read a letter directed to me?”
Her face flushed and her eyes blazed with indignation and surprise.
“I beg your pardon,” Clarice replied, more abashed than she had ever thought it possible for herself to be before a girl like Elithe. “It was not directed. It was in his bag with his present for me, bought in Chicago, and which I did not deserve. It touched me very closely. Poor Jack.”
There were tears in her eyes as she continued: “There was no address on the letter, and, seeing my name so often I read it. My brother loved you. Did you return it?”
Before Elithe could reply her aunt interposed: “You have no right to ask such personal questions. It is none of your business whether she loved your brother or not. But I will answer for her. She did not, and never could. That he cared for her is evident. Poor fellow. I never liked him much. I think better of him now in the light of what my niece has told me and what she will tell you.”