It was late when they began to separate. "Where is Marion?" asked Aunt Caroline, when the lights were turned on, and the others came to bid her good night.
"He must have gone to his room," said Uncle Jim. "I noticed half an hour ago that he was not here."
"Perhaps he didn't like the noise," said Richard, with what sounded like a slight shade of sarcasm. "His nerves are not very strong."
The next morning, when Irma went to breakfast, none of the older members of her party were at the table, and Marion, too, was missing.
"Of course Marion didn't give it to me," she heard Katie say, as she took her seat.
"It's certainly very strange that it should be the same device as his small seal."
"Probably they wouldn't look at all alike, if you should bring them together and compare them."
"Can mine eyes deceive me?" Richard assumed a tragic tone.
"It's the ring that Katie has around her scarf." Ellen explained to Irma. "Richard is sure that Marion gave it to her. But he ought to believe Katie when she says this is not so."
Irma looked closely at the ring through which Katie had pulled the end of her silk necktie. The dragon carved on the agate stone certainly seemed familiar. Yes, she recalled the same dragon on an old-fashioned seal that Marion had shown her one day; at least it looked the same, though of course the dragon was by no means an uncommon device. But after all, this was no affair of hers. If Katie said Marion had not given the ring to her there seemed to be no reason for Richard to doubt Katie's word. Suppose even that he had loaned it to her, why should her cousin concern himself about it?
After breakfast Katie and Ellen drove to their dressmaker's, and just as Irma had finished a home letter Marion appeared in the reading-room.
"I had an early breakfast," he explained, "and have been out walking. Now I wish some one would take a trolley ride with me. Will _you_ go?"
At first Irma could hardly believe the invitation was meant for her; she had been so little with Marion the past fortnight.
But when she saw that he undoubtedly meant her, she accepted gladly.
"It does not matter where we go," he cried, as the car started. "I simply wish to see what the suburbs are like out this way."