So, in the gathering twilight, I paced slowly homewards, in a tumultuous whirl of happy thoughts: my heart seemed full, and running over, with joy and thankfulness: all that I had so fervently longed for, and prayed for, seemed now to have come to pass. And, though I reproached myself, bitterly, for the unworthy suspicion I had for one moment harboured against the true-hearted Lady Muriel, I took comfort in knowing it had been but a passing thought.
Not Bruno himself could have mounted the stairs with so buoyant a step, as I felt my way up in the dark, not pausing to strike a light in the entry, as I knew I had left the lamp burning in my sitting-room.
But it was no common _lamplight_ into which I now stepped, with a strange, new, dreamy sensation of some subtle witchery that had come over the place. Light, richer and more golden than any lamp could give, flooded the room, streaming in from a window I had somehow never noticed before, and lighting up a group of three shadowy figures, that grew momently more distinct—a grave old man in royal robes, leaning back in an easy chair, and two children, a girl and a boy, standing at his side.
“Have you the Jewel still, my child?” the old man was saying.
“Oh, _yes_!” Sylvie exclaimed with unusual eagerness. “Do you think I’d _ever_ lose it or forget it?” She undid the ribbon round her neck, as she spoke, and laid the Jewel in her father’s hand.
Bruno looked at it admiringly. “What a lovely brightness!” he said. “It’s just like a little red star! May I take it in my hand?”
Sylvie nodded: and Bruno carried it off to the window, and held it aloft against the sky, whose deepening blue was already spangled with stars. Soon he came running back in some excitement. “Sylvie! Look here!” he cried. “I can see right through it when I hold it up to the sky. And it isn’t red a bit: it’s, oh such a lovely blue! And the words are all different! Do look at it!”
Sylvie was quite excited, too, by this time; and the two children eagerly held up the Jewel to the light, and spelled out the legend between them, “ALL WILL LOVE SYLVIE.”
“Why, this is the _other_ Jewel!” cried Bruno. “Don’t you remember, Sylvie? The one you _didn’t_ choose!”
Sylvie took it from him, with a puzzled look, and held it, now up to the light, now down. “It’s blue, _one_ way,” she said softly to herself, “and it’s red, the _other_ way! Why, I thought there were _two_ of them—Father!” she suddenly exclaimed, laying the Jewel once more in his hand, “I do believe it was the _same_ Jewel all the time!”