"I remember there were four—no, five—pieces of gold, and about a pound's worth of silver."
"Then I think I have got most of it." Still kneeling with his back to her, he opened the central division of the purse to put the gold inside it. Something lay there, safely shut in. It was a slender silver chain with half a broken sixpence attached to it by a ring.
Feelings such as he could not name shook the young man from head to foot. In his male selfishness, or not realizing what the girl was suffering, he turned round upon her, swift and keen, an angry glitter in his eyes because of the tears in his heart.
"I had better throw this away, had I not?" said he.
"Throw what away?" faltered Rona in surprise, and then in an instant realized what he had found. And again she blushed—blushed furiously—the stain of her former emotion having hardly faded from her cheeks. She turned away her head to hide the mingled feeling in her face. She was desperately hurt, she was ashamed, she was indignant ... she was something else too. What was it?
She knew not. There was no name for the strange force which shook her, as she managed to reply.
"Certainly not. Put it back where you found it."
There was a suggestion of his having pried unwarrantably into her purse's secret compartment.
"Let me give it to one of the children in the village," he said, in a low voice, urgently. "As long as you keep it you are acting a lie; you are acknowledging my claim. If I throw it away you are free."
She managed to speak at last. "I do acknowledge your claim. It is you who have renounced me. Denzil said there could be nothing binding between us until you and he had met—face to face."