"Have you found it? Yes! Oh, Charlie! Is there anything inside?"
"Rather, there's a ring. What a queer old thing! Whatever made your mother keep it hidden away in there?"
I knew, in an instant. I recognised it, although I had only seen it once in my life, and that once was sundered by the passage of nineteen years. Mr. Sandys was holding in his hand the cameo ring which I had seen Lilian Trowbridge remove from Decimus Vernon's finger, and which was own brother to the ring described in the tattered volume, which she had directed her husband to send me--"as a memory"--as having been one of Lucrezia Borgia's pretty playthings. I was so confounded by the rush of emotions occasioned by its sudden discovery, that, for the moment, I was tongue-tied.
Sandys turned to Miss. Crampton.
"It's too large for you. It's large enough for me. May I try it on?"
I hastened towards him. The prospect of what might immediately ensue spurred me to inarticulate speech.
"Don't! For God's sake, don't! Give that ring to me, sir!"
They stared at me, as well they might. My sudden and, to them, meaningless agitation was a bolt from the blue. Young Sandys withdrew from me the hand which held the ring.
"Give it to you?--why?--is it, yours?"
As I confronted the young fellow's smiling countenance, I felt myself to be incapable, on the instant, of arranging my thoughts in sufficient order to enable me to give them adequate expression. I appealed for help to Crampton.