"Are the old oleanders in the garden yet?" asked Mrs. Laudersdale.
"Not the very same. The hurricane destroyed those, years ago; these are others, grand and rosy as sunrise sometimes."
"It was my Aunt Susanne who planted those, I have heard."
"And it was your daughter Rite who planted these."
"She buried a little box of old keepsakes at its foot, after her brother had examined them,--a ring or two, a coin from which she broke and kept one half"------
"Oh, yes! we found the little box, found it when Mr. Heath was in Martinique, all rusted and moulded and falling apart, and he wears that half of the coin on his watch-chain. See!"
Mrs. Laudersdale glanced up indifferently, but Mrs. Purcell sprang from her elegant lounging and bent to look at her brother's chain.
"How odd that I never noticed it, Fred!" she exclaimed. "And how odd that I should wear the same!" And, shaking her châtelaine, she detached a similar affair.
They were placed side by side in Mr. Raleigh's hand; they matched entirely, and, so united, they formed a singular French coin of value and antiquity, the missing figures on one segment supplied by the other, the embossed profile continued and lost on each, the scroll begun by this and ended by that; they were plainly severed portions of the same piece.
"And this was buried by your Aunt Susanne Le Blanc?" asked Mrs. Purcell, turning to Mrs. Laudersdale again, with a flush on her cheek.