“You might as well say something,” began Sue, moving her hand in the sunlight.
“I have nothing to say. I wonder how you dare come to me.”
“Why shouldn’t I dare? I know it seems soon; but circumstances make a difference, and Mr. Gesner has to go to Europe next month. He took the other ring; I couldn’t help it—I wouldn’t have kept it safe with a lock of his hair in a little box—but he said that I shouldn’t have this unless I gave him that.”
Tessa’s head went down over her work; she had not wept aloud before since she was a little girl, but now the sobs burst through her lips uncontrolled. That ring that Dr. Lake had carried that day in the rain not fourteen months ago!
Sue sprang to her feet, then dropped back into her chair and wept in sympathy, partly with a vague feeling of having done some dreadful thing, partly with the fear that life in a foreign land might not be wholly alluring; Mr. Gesner was kind, but poor Gerald had loved her so!
“O, Tessa! Tessa! don’t,” she cried. “Stop crying and speak to me.”
“Go away from me. Go home. I will not speak to you.”
For a moment Sue waited, then she arose and moved towards the door, standing another moment, but as Tessa did not turn or speak, she went down-stairs, not lightly, hushed by the revelation of a grief that she could not understand.
