Then, as she still continued silent from fear, and not knowing how to answer him, he looked up in her face.
“And this!—and this!—oh, God! and this!” he cried, as his eyes caught the gleam of the other jewels, his voice rising in pain with each word, as he touched, first the cross, then the necklace, and last the glittering tiara upon her golden head.
She began to think him a lunatic, or else that the gems were bewitched and were about to get her into deeper trouble.
“They—they are heirlooms,” she finally managed to articulate, and speaking at random.
“Did she give them to you?”
“Whom?”
“Meta—my Meta—Mehetabel Douglas!” he said, speaking incoherently, almost wildly.
“Yes, they used to be hers,” Isabel said, thinking only of the despised and injured governess, and inwardly quaking as she wondered what would come next.
“Used to be!” he cried, catching at her words, while his face grew almost convulsed—“used to be! Then she is dead! Ah, me!” and he caught his breath in a hard, dry sob. “This was our engagement ring,” he continued, touching it again, tenderly. “How beautiful she was the night I put this upon her finger! There is not a woman here to-night as fair as she was then! And these other gems were her bridal gifts, and I thought to see her wear them when she should have been my wife. But the time never came. That is long ago—ages ago, it seems to me! I thought the memory of it had faded out into but a shadow, but the sight of these things to-night is like the keen edge of a knife in my heart.”
His voice had grown infinitely sad. He appeared quite unnerved; his lips quivered, and tears stood in his fine eyes, while he gazed upon that ring, as if he were looking his last upon his dearest friend who was dead.