"What do you want?" I asked, hardly noticing what she held in one slender palm.
"Where did you get this Amey? Do you mind telling me?"
She looked up into my face as she spoke, with such pleading sorrowful eyes, that I snatched the trinket impulsively from her and turned it over in my own hand.
It was the forgotten locket I had found in the library on that March afternoon before the Merivales' musical. A change passed over my own face at sight of it, and it was with some agitation I answered Hortense's timid question:
"It is a strange thing how you came by this. I have never seen it but once, the night I found it, until now."
"You found it then," she murmured slowly with her eyes still buried in my face. "Have you ever opened it?"
I laughed dryly and said, "It is a queer thing, isn't it, but I never have."
"Open it now," she interrupted seriously. I took it between my fingers and after repeated efforts managed to open it. There were two small photographs inside. One was Ernest Dalton's—and the other was mine!
A crimson flush deluged my face and neck, my hand trembled and the locket fell into Hortense's lap. She raised her solemn eyes now grown sadder and more solemn than ever, and said in a voice more plaintive and pleading than any voice I ever heard before,
"Then you know him?"