Surely the girl must have been miserable too, for she looked pale and troubled, and there were signs about her usually bright eyes that were suggestive of recent tears. And lo! As he glanced at her hand which hold up a parasol, he saw that it was unadorned. The ring was gone.
"There must have been some stupid mistake," he thought. "I have taken for granted what had probably no reality. Only Nettie's own lips shall convince me that she is other than the pure, true-hearted girl I have ever judged her to be."
To think was to act. There was no one else very near, so Arthur joined Nettie, and a new light came to her sweet face, and new roses sprang into being on her cheeks. He began to tell his tale, strolling the while into a by-path, and had got as far as the ring.
"I came on purpose to speak to you to-day, Nettie, bringing with me the blessing and approval of my dear aunt and uncle, who would welcome you with open arms as my wife," he said. "There was only one person for me amongst all the guests, and when I saw you, darling, sweet, and fair, and true, I longed to clasp you to my heart and tell you that I gave you my whole best love a year ago. And then I looked at something sparkling on your finger, and saw a ring, and feared that someone had been beforehand with me, so went away miserable, without a word. What did the ring mean, dear, for you wear it no longer?"
Nettie glanced at her hand as Arthur alluded to the ring, and gave a cry of horror.
"What shall I do?" she cried. "I did not know it was gone. I would not lose it for anything. Please do not stop me!"
Away fled Nettie towards the house, leaving Arthur with his love story unfinished, and to put what construction he chose upon her precipitate retreat. To pursue the girl would have been to cause remark, and Arthur went more slowly in the direction taken by Nettie, his mind full of half-formed plans for an immediate voyage to the Antipodes.
Mrs. Worsley was sitting on the terrace, and Annette must have passed her on her way to the house. Arthur stood by her for a little while, talking of the party, the lovely weather, and the manifest enjoyment of the guests, but his manner was constrained, and his answers often irrelevant. He was on the point of turning away, when Annette once more appeared, tripping lightly towards them, with a radiant face.
"Aunty, dear aunty, please take this back with my best thanks, and never, if you love me, ask me to wear borrowed feathers again. I have been in dreadful trouble. I missed it from my finger, or rather Mr. Boyd did, and I thought I had lost it in the park. Then I remembered I had been to my room to wash my hands after preparing some fruit for the children, and I left Mr. Boyd very unceremoniously, to see if I had laid it on the dressing-table. It was not there, and I was almost in despair, when where do you think I found it? Exactly fitted into the centre hole of the drainer which covers the sponge bowl. How glad I was! I am not fit to be trusted with valuables, you see, for, being unaccustomed to them, I forget that I have them. Thank you a thousand times for the loan of the ring, aunty, and most of all for freeing me from the awful responsibility of having valuables not my own to take care of. I will never wear borrowed feathers again as long as I live."
As Nettie spoke, she placed the ring which had caused Arthur's misery in Mrs. Worsley's hand, and then gave a sweet, shy, upward glance at the young man, which seemed to say that the story he had begun to tell would now find an attentive listener.