The faint strains of the distant violin swelled louder as Ida held out her hand from which she had taken all the rings but one. She turned her white fingers in the moonlight, to show the glimmer of a pearl.
"He has told me so many times that that is what my life seems like to him," she said, with a sob in her voice, "--a pearl. I know he has been awfully wild and fast, but when he tells me that only my influence over him can make him the man I want him to be, and that if it were not for my love and prayers he wouldn't care what became of him, or what he did, do you blame me for disregarding aunt's wishes? Don't you think it is cruel of her to interfere?"
Lloyd, listening with breathless interest to the friend whom she loved with all a little girl's adoring enthusiasm for an older one whom she has taken as her model, gave a passionate assent.
"Oh, I knew you'd feel that way about it," said Ida, reaching out to clasp Lloyd's hand with the white one on which glimmered the pearl. "It is _so_ good to have some one to talk to who can understand and sympathize."
An eloquent silence fell between them, broken only by the rustle of the dead leaves and the wailing voice of the violin, repeating its plaintive refrain like a human cry. The music and the witchery of the moonlight laid an ever-deepening spell on the listening child, till she felt that she was part of some old tale in which Ida was the ladye fair, and Edwardo the most interesting of heroes, held apart by a cruel fate. She drank in every word eagerly, seeing in her imagination a tall, handsome man with a haughty, dark face, who stood with outstretched hands, murmuring, "Oh, my Pearl, you can make of my life what you will!"
When Ida took a tiny locket from a chain around her neck and opened it to show her his picture, Lloyd felt a distinct twinge of disappointment. It was not at all like the face she had pictured. But Ida explained that it was not a good likeness, only a head cut from a group picture in which he had been taken with the members of his football team. She had a fine photograph of him in her trunk, but had to keep it hidden, not knowing what day her aunt might swoop down upon her for a visit of inspection.