'Look at them,' said Hazel. 'As cold and hard as he is. Flashing up nothing deeper than the pocket they came from.'
'There is no fault in the diamonds,' said Josephine sulkily. 'They ought to be hard. And these are beauties. And Charteris isn't harder than other people, that I know of. It is only thatI don't want to marry him. And he is in an awful hurry. If it was a long way off, I wouldn't mind so much.'
Wych Hazel dropped the chestnuts.
'Josephine,' she said gravely, 'do you see these rings on my hands?'
'Yes. I have seen them and admired them often enough. There's a splendid emerald though. I never saw that before. O Hazel!' the girl cried suddenly. 'It's on that finger!'
The hands were something to look at, in their glitter or strange old- fashioned rings, with many-coloured stones and various settings. Only a close observer would have noticed that the emerald alone was a fit.
'Every one of all the eight is a betrothal ring,' Hazel went on, not heeding; 'every one has been a token between people who chose each other from all the world. They were not all rich, you see, here is a poor little silver hoop among the diamonds. And they were not all happy; for this ruby has seen a death-parting, and the pearls are not whiter than the face that had waited for twenty years. But not one ring has the stain of a broken troth, nor the soil of a purchase. The people suffered, they waited, they died,but they never so much as thought of any one but each other, in all the world!' Wych Hazel folded her hands in her lap again, looking at Josephine with eyes that were all alight.
'But that's yours,' Josephine went in impatiently. 'Who put it on?'
The girl's accent was of more than curiosity.
'There are several of them you have never seen before,' said Hazel. 'Josephine, do you understand what I say to you? People starve to death upon diamonds.'
'Ah well, but do tell me!' said the girl, with a curious mixture of coaxing and distressful in her tone. 'Do tell me who it was, Hazel. I just want to know.'