“Well, we will not give up hope, even yet,” she said, trying to speak comfortingly. “We shall go back to Brooklyn next week, and we will try to see him as often as we can. We will visit his studio, and look at his pictures and those of his friends, and if he is unsuccessful in his search for that girl, he may turn to you again for comfort.”
“I cannot get over it that she, with her great eyes and yellow hair, should have attracted him and won him, when we have strained every nerve and spent hundreds for him,” Josephine said, angrily.
At this moment a servant entered the room and handed her a note.
She opened it eagerly and read it.
Her face flushed a deep crimson, and, with a passionate gesture, she instantly tore it in two.
“What is it?” questioned her mother.
“It is too dreadful!” the spoilt beauty cried, stamping her foot; “and I believe that girl will be the death of me yet.”
“Tell me what it is,” persisted Mrs. Richards, growing pale.
“It is a note from Lord Carrol himself,” Josephine answered, her cheeks still hot from mortification and anger. “When we were at Long Branch, he noticed this cameo ring that I wear—I happened to put it on the last night that we were there, unfortunately—and said that it was very much like one which belonged to a friend of his. He appeared rather strangely when he said it, and told me that his friend’s name was Archibald Sherbrooke. Of course I can understand now why he would not say that it had belonged to him. I told him that it was given to me by a relative, and he did not appear like himself after that.”
“But how came you by it—who gave it to you?” interrupted her mother, who had never noticed the ring until now, for Josephine had so many trinkets that she could not keep track of them all.