The duchess was much affected, but still maintained the severity of manner which she had brought into the room, though it evidently cost her a strong effort to resist the appeal of her child. She sat down upon the bed, and, drawing Lady Jane before her, took the small hands, clasped together, in both hers, and looked searchingly into the soft brown eyes that met her gaze, not without anxiety, but still with a trustful fondness that would have disarmed a firmer heart than that which beat so full of generous and affectionate impulses in the bosom of that noble lady.
“Jane,” she said at last, glancing at the slender fingers locked in her own, “where is the ring which I gave you on the duke’s last birth-day?”
Lady Jane started at the question, and withdrawing her hand, cast a quick glance upon it, and then turned anxiously to the old woman.
“My careful nurse here, must have taken it from my finger as I slept,” she said, doubtingly.
The old woman shook her head, and Lady Jane turned earnestly to her mother, perplexed alike by the loss of her ring, and the strange effect which it produced on the duchess.
“When did you wear it last?” enquired the lady.
The young lady mused for a few moments, and then mentioned the previous day as that when she remembered to have seen it on her finger.
“Ay, I remember well,” said the nurse. “It was on my lady’s hand when she lifted it to chide Richard for his outcry in the crowd. Just then I was carried off by the mob, and jostled about till it seemed a miracle that I ever reached the barge again. I mind now that Richard saw the ring also, for when we all met at the landing, and sat waiting, hour after hour, in hopes that some blessed chance would direct the poor lady how to find us, I would have gone back in search of her, but he forbade me, saying, that no harm would befall a lady of her high condition while she carried on her fingers the power to purchase protection; so, when the night closed in, we rowed down the river, just in time to see the sweet child borne to her chamber, more dead than alive, with the ill-treatment she had received.”
The duchess turned her eyes earnestly on the nurse as she spoke, but if she thought to detect anything but an honest spirit of truth in those withered features, her scrutiny was unrewarded.
“How chanced it,” she said, turning again to her daughter, “how chanced it that you were entangled in the mob near St. Margaret’s, when you went forth to enjoy the morning breeze upon the river?”