"You are greatly mistaken, Mr. Goddard; it was in my possession before the night of the ball," quietly returned his companion.
"I do not believe it!" cried the man, excitedly.
"I will prove it to you if you desire," Mrs. Stewart remarked.
"I defy you to do so."
"Very well; I accept your gage. You will, however, have to excuse me for a few moments," and, with these few words, the stately and graceful woman turned and disappeared within a chamber that opened from the room they were in.
It would be difficult to describe the conflict of emotions that raged in Gerald Goddard's breast during her absence.
While he was almost beside himself with anger and chagrin, over the very precarious position in which he found himself, he was also tormented by intense disappointment and a sense of irritation to think he had so fatally marred his life by his heartless desertion of the beautiful woman who had just left him.
Anna was not to be compared with her; she was perhaps more brilliant and pronounced in her style; but she lacked the charm of refinement and sweet graciousness that characterized Isabel; while, more than all else, he lamented the loss of the princely inheritance which had fallen to her, and which he would have shared if he had been true to her.
Ten minutes passed, and then he was aroused from his wretched reflections by the opening of the chamber door near him, when his late housekeeper at Wyoming walked into the room.