"Yes," Miss Wycliffe said coolly, "I was right. The cutting and arrangement of the stones is peculiar, and there's not another like it in Warwick." She arose to her feet, the ring gripped in her hand till the edge of the cross almost cut her tender palm. "And one thing more, Lena. I have a reason for asking it. Do you love Mr. Emmet?"
There was no need to answer, and indeed the girl could not utter a word, so intense was her misery, so overpowering her assurance of impending disaster.
"And do you suppose he loves you, just because he has kissed you and given you this ring which he picked up in the car?"
There was still no answer, and the next words came like the voice of fate.
"Well, I feel it my duty to tell you that a man in his position can only be amusing himself when he pays attention to a girl in yours. You must have nothing more to do with him. It's better for you to know it now, and to have done with this infatuation, for I tell you plainly, he means nothing that an honest girl can accept."
Left alone, Lena tottered as if she would have fallen; then sank upon her knees and crept to the window. With trembling fingers she raised the sash and let in the cool night air upon her bare neck and shoulders. She let in also a fuller burst of music and cheering, and through her tears she saw the lights dancing wildly, like a procession of fallen stars. Somewhere in that stream of splendour and sound he sat in his carriage, proud and triumphant, and with no thought of her.
In her own room Miss Wycliffe stood before her mirror, looking now at the white reflection of her face, and now at the recovered ring which she had tossed upon the bureau, while in her splendid eyes blazed the light of a great and implacable anger. For the man who was at that moment passing by in the street, who had taken her gift and bestowed it upon a servant, had been her husband for more than two years.
One snowy afternoon, shortly before Christmas, Mayor Emmet came out to his sleigh from the City Hall, drawing on his gloves with a sense of release from unaccustomed confinement. While others hurried along, shrinking into their coats as if they would withdraw as far as possible from the nipping cold, he strode slowly and breathed deep, showing a strong man's conscious enjoyment of Nature in one of her sterner moods. His manner displayed a consciousness of something else also, of the position he meant to grace. He was already beginning to appreciate the discomfiture of his enemies. They had thought to find him bewildered and inefficient, and had encountered instead a man whose conception of his rights and duties was just and adequate. Strange also to superficial thinkers was his dignity of bearing, to which the _élite_ of Warwick paid the compliment of their resentment. But that ease and precision of movement, that steady glance of the eye, had been transferred from the baseball field to become singularly effective in the mayor's office.