Their fingers touched and lingered an instant in the contact.
“It is the brooch I remember—”
“Yes—”
“At the tall lady’s throat who was near me when I was a little child.”
Jeffray, who was staring at the thing, glanced up suddenly into Bess’s face. A look of mute inquiry, of significant sympathy, flashed between them.
“How did the brooch come to Dan?” asked the man.
“I do not know.”
“Strange. Perhaps—”
“Dan went out one night, and gave me this in the morning. Where it came from I cannot tell, unless Isaac, his father, gave it him.”
Jeffray sat in thought, balancing the brooch in his palm, and gazing out over the still waters of the pool. Bess watched him, her hands resting on the stone, her brown forearms bare to the elbow.