He lifted her hand higher, and looked long and delightedly at the heavy silver ring with its beautifully colored and flawless stone, which Ariel was wearing.
Ariel wanted to cry, “Oh, Michael! It isn’t missing my father that makes me so out of things to-night. And please forgive me for not playing up when we owe you everything, my father and I,—and you are going away so soon! It isn’t grief. It’s something else. For I can’t be brave, the way Anne is brave. I am frightened, do you see?”
She was indeed frightened! For Ariel, like Anne, had a conviction that to-night things were to be decided between Hugh and Joan. She only said, however, calmly enough, conscious of the waiting silence of the others, “Grandam gave me this ring just to-night. The color is wonderful, I think.”
“And the setting! It’s a rare and beautiful setting! But it is a man’s ring! It cannot belong to you, my Ariel! It is much too heavy for this little hand.”
He continued to hold her wrist and stare down, fascinated, at the lovely ring.
Mrs. Weyman was leaning across the table, amazed. “Grandam gave you her aquamarine, Ariel! I hadn’t noticed you wearing it. But she values it above everything she possesses, except that pencil drawing of the hands. I don’t know what its association for her is, or why she always wears it. She’s avoided telling us. Did she give it to you, or just let you wear it, Ariel?”
“She gave it to me,” Ariel replied, but her own words, her answer to the simple question, rang in her ears like a knell. Her blood went icy. For suddenly she knew the significance of the ring, and the significance of Grandam’s having given it to her. And yet no one had told her. This ring had been worn on one of those pictured hands, on the hand that was to open the coach door for Grandam when she got out in Eternity. That holy hand had given the jewel to Grandam as its last act on earth. And now Grandam had passed it on to Ariel. And all Grandam had said was, “Here’s a keepsake to match your green feather.”
_Father’s green feather.... Grandam’s and the Saint’s aquamarine!_ Oh, pray God Grandam hadn’t meant Ariel to understand a swift farewell in the casual, sacred gift. Pray God! Pray God! Did Grandam think she was about to die?