“Strangest of all, they allow some crooked scoundrel to spin the wheel or flip the card.
“There was a girl,” she stared hard at the fire, “a very beautiful girl, from a rich and cultured family, who gambled once and lost. To-day, in her own sight at least, she stands disgraced.
“And because I know her, because she is kind and good in spite of her father’s wealth, I am striving to help her. For, after all, what matters most in life is our own estimation of ourselves. If you feel that your life is ruined, that you face everlasting disgrace, what does it matter that the world bows, or even applauds? It is the judgment handed down from the throne of one’s own soul that counts most of all.
“This girl—she is hardly sixteen, a mere slip of a thing with wistful blue eyes—as I said, belongs to a rich family. They have a cottage up here on this very bay, I am told, and she is here now. Yet I have not seen her. She does not know I am pulling for her, that I have resolved to retrieve that priceless trinket and return it to her.
“Life is often that way. While we work, or play, even as we sleep, there are those in the world who are thinking of us, striving to help us, acting the part of fairy godmothers to us. Is it not wonderful?”
“But these rubies?” Florence asked in a puzzled tone. “If those people are so very rich, cannot they forgive the loss of one valuable plaything? And did it not belong to the girl, after all?”
“No,” replied Miss Weightman, “it did not belong to the girl. There’s the rub. And you misjudge rich people if you think they do not prize their least possessions. Perhaps they prize them more than do the poor or the moderately rich. That is why they are rich. Their bump of ownership is well developed. Their hands and hearts were shaped to grasp and hold. At times this grows into selfish greed and thousands of poor people suffer for it.
“The three rubies, set in the strangest manner, were part of a rare collection gathered from the corners of the earth only after years of search. It is little wonder that the owner was indignant when it was broken into.
“The collection was in the girl’s home. She had access to it. In a moment of bravado, at her chum’s suggestion, she slipped about her neck a chain, to which the jewels were attached by a sort of pendant.
“Some other fancy seized her and she promptly forgot the jewels still gleaming at her throat. A telephone rang. She answered it, consented to join a party of her school friends, and was whirled away into one of those wild nights that too often end in disaster.