I had met her at all the entertainments of the season. I had watched her pretty manoeuvres and followed her flirtations with a quiet amusement. Her admirers were numberless and pursued her with the most emphatic devotedness. She was an item in the individual lives of young people of both sexes, exciting in some hearts the bitterest envy and jealousy, and kindling the name of an all-consuming love in many others. She had earned the palm of triumph and victory all through the gay season, and now that the end was near she decided to gather all those who had witnessed her conquests abroad, within her own home and there make her retiring courtesy under peculiarly advantageous circumstances. She was to leave in a fortnight after for an extended tour through Europe.
It was the fifteenth of March and the Merivales' "Musical" was to commence at eight o'clock. The wind blew fiercely through the stiff, naked boughs of the giant maples, and drifted the light powdery snow madly on before it. I had been in-doors all day listening to the weird wailing of the ceaseless wind as it whistled down the chimneys and swept past the house corners. I had written and read and stitched until my eyes were wearied and my fingers numb, and it was only four o'clock, that turning-point on a March day from the sunshine to the gloaming when we women know not what to do with ourselves; when it is too cold to go out or expect visitors, too late in the day to begin any occupation, too dark to read with any comfort, and too early to light the lamps. I went to the window and looked impatiently into the street but there was no comfort to be had there; a milkman's wagon stood over the way, his horse pawing the frozen ground while he filled his measure with the cold white liquid. A band of little children ran screaming by with a large dog drawing a sleigh; a beggar woman clad in flimsy rags was mounting the steps of a neighboring house, and that was all. I shrugged my shoulders and turned away with a smothered yawn. The piano stood open before me, I threw myself carelessly on the stool and thrummed languidly on the key-board for a moment or so, but I was not in the humor to play, and with another yawn I arose, crossed the hall and passed into my father's library.
He was usually there at this hour, but early that afternoon he had gone into the country to see a patient, and as he would not be back until after dinner, I appropriated his sanctum in his stead. A fire burned in the grate, not a roaring blazing fire, but a pile of steadily glowing coals, intensely red and hot, that kept the room comfortable, but threw no shadow on the tinted walls.
I wheeled the light lounge that stood opposite the door towards the fire, and sank gratefully into it to have a little "think" about the past, all to myself. I began to distinguish the spires of Notre Dame Abbey rising clearly out of the glowing embers. Faces that I loved peeped through its latticed windows, smilingly, and voices that were like the breath of summer in my ear called to me from its hallowed portals. I was back among the scenes of my early happiness, the winter day was flooded with summer warmth and sunshine; the birds twittered in the fresh green foliage, and the stream murmured placidly on at the foot of the convent garden. My languor and weariness were gone; I was cheerful and glad again, as I had been in my careless girlhood. How long it lasted according to time reckoned by minutes and hours, I knew not. In my dream many days came and went with new and repeated delights. All I know is, that when I awoke the room was shrouded in darkness and the fire had grown cheerless and dull I started up, for the change was a shock to me. I did not know I had fallen asleep, and it must have been a full hour or more since I came into the library. More than that, I felt a sharp sensation for which I could not thoroughly account. For a moment I suspected that some one must be in the room, then again, the unbroken stillness re-assured me that this was mere fancy. I felt an abiding presence which seemed to hover right around me. I raised myself on one elbow and asked in an audible whisper:
"Is anyone here?"
A coal gave way in the fire-place and the embers loosened and fell. I started involuntarily, but there was no answer to my question. I rubbed my eyes briskly and stood up. As I did so, something fell upon the floor with a clinking noise. I put my hand up instinctively to my ears. One ruby ear-ring was missing. I groped my way to the mantel-piece and struck a light. Stepping carefully back towards the lounge, with my eyes buried in the carpet, I spied a glittering object at a little distance from where I had been standing. I stooped and picked it up. To my great surprise it was not my ruby ear-ring. It was a small oval locket suspended from a few links of a heavy gold chain, one of the uppermost links was crooked and broken.
I turned it over and over between my fingers, holding the candle so that the light fell full upon it. It was not my father's; of that I was fully certain. It had a strange, unfamiliar look about it such as other people's small wares always have for us, and yet, the more I examined it, the more I began to think I had seen it somewhere before. I was mystified. As I turned my head I descried my missing ear-ring lying in the threads of a crocheted tidy that had lain under my head. Setting down the candle, I extricated it and restored it to my ear. I then blew out the light and went quietly up to my own room.
I had just closed the door and secured myself against possible intrusion when the sound of the dinner-bell broke upon my ear. I immediately rose, and storing my newly found treasure hurriedly away, I went down to the dining-room.
My step-mother was already there, chatting with Mrs. Hunter, who had come in to spend a quiet hour of the afternoon, and accepted an informal invitation to dinner.
My father had not yet returned, and as Freddie was still at college, we were quite a cosy little dinner party in ourselves.