"I am quite aware of that, Colonel Carlyle. Your ring is a marvel of beauty and taste, and I will wear it on another finger if you like; but I prize the other more for its associations than for its beauty or value. It was a keepsake from a friend. You remember the pretty words of the old song:
"'Who has not kept some trifling thing,
More prized than jewels rare,
A faded flower, a broken ring,
A tress of golden hair?'"
There was a tone of unconscious pleading in her pathetic voice, and the heart of the jealous old husband gave a throb of pain as he listened.
"It is true, then," he thought to himself. "It was a gift of a former lover."
Aloud he said rather coldly:
"Since you prize it so much as a keepsake, Bonnibel, put it away in some secret place, and preserve it as romantic people do such treasures—it will be safer thus."
"I prefer to wear it, sir," she answered, with a glance of surprise at the persistency.
"But I do not wish you to wear it. I particularly desire that you should lay it aside and wear the one I have brought you instead," he insisted, rather sharply goaded on by jealousy and dread.
Bonnibel turned her eyes away from the blue waves of the ocean and looked curiously at her husband. She saw that he was in desperate earnest. His dark eyes flashed with almost the fire of youth, and his features worked with some inward emotion she did not in the least understand.
"I am sorry to refuse your request, sir," she answered, a little gravely; "though I am surprised that you should insist upon it when I have plainly expressed a contrary wish. I can only repeat what I have said before, that I prefer to wear it."