Each eardrop was a single turquoise, almost as large, and quite as clear in colour, as a hedge-sparrow's egg. The setting was Roman, exquisitely artistic.
"Now I can forgive anyone for sending me such jewellery as that," said Lady Mabel. "It is not the sort of thing one sees in every jeweller's shop."
Rorie looked at the blue stones with rueful eyes. He knew them well. He had seen them contrasted with ruddy chestnut hair, and the whitest skin in Christendom--or at any rate the whitest he had ever seen, and a man's world can be but the world he knows.
"There is a letter," said Lady Mabel. "Now I shall find out all about my mysterious Jersey friend."
"Dear Lady Mabel,--I cannot bear that your wedding-day should go by without bringing you some small token of regard from your husband's old friend. Will you wear these earrings now and then, and believe that they come from one who has nothing but good wishes for Rorie's wife?--Yours very truly,
"Why, they are actually from your old playfellow!" cried Mabel, with a laugh that had not quite a genuine ring in its mirth. "The young lady who used to follow the staghounds, in a green habit with brass buttons, ever so many years ago, and who insisted on calling you Rorie. She does it still, you see. How very sweet of her to send me a wedding-present. I ought to have remembered. I heard something about her being sent off to Jersey by her people, because she had grown rather incorrigible at home."
"She was not incorrigible, and she was not sent off to Jersey," said Roderick grimly. "She left home of her own free will; because she could not hit it with her stepfather."
"That is another way of expressing it, but I think we both mean pretty much the same thing," retorted Mabel. "But I don't want to know why she went to Jersey. She has behaved very sweetly in sending me such a pretty letter; and when she is at home again I shall be very happy to see her at my garden-parties."
Lord Mallow had no share in this conversation, for the Duke had buttonholed him, and was giving him a detailed account of the cart-horse's symptoms.
The little party dispersed soon after this, and did not foregather again until just before dinner, when the people who had been to see the ruins were all assembled, full of their day's enjoyment, and of sundry conversational encounters which they had had with the natives of the district. They gave themselves the usual airs which people who have been laboriously amusing themselves inflict upon those wiser individuals who prefer the passive pleasure of repose, and made a merit of having exposed themselves to the meridian sun, in the pursuit of archaeological knowledge.