A sudden fear clutched him. "What did you have to say to me?"
"That—oh, Justin, I can't give Anthony up——"
"Why not?"
"Oh——We can't talk here. Come up-stairs quietly—we mustn't disturb Letty."
She glided ahead of him, and when he came into the shadowy room she was standing by the cabinet.
"I've something to show you," she said, and opened the carved box and held it out to him.
"It's my father's ring," she said; "he broke my mother's heart—and I won't break Anthony's."
Then, in halting sentences, she told him how that day she had come upon the ring. She told him her mother's history. And he listened, and insisted at last, tenderly, that she had made mountains out of mole-hills. But he found her obstinate.
"I must not break my promise," she insisted. "Happiness could never come to us."
And, white and wistful in the face of his flaming arguments, she held to her determination until he left her.