“You would like to know, Jeanie, the story of that ring,” she said.

I told her I was afraid to have her talk about it, but she went on:—­

“It is an old heirloom, and all our family history is full of stories of this ring.  There are so many tales connected with it, that every one of us has looked upon it with a sort of superstition, and cherished it as a talisman connected with our lives.  It was always a test of constancy, and the stories of those occasions when it has detected falsehood have always been remembered.  I suppose there are many when it has been quietly worn, undisturbed, that have been forgotten.  It has told many a sad tale in my own family.  It came back, broken, to my brother Arthur, and he died of a broken heart.  My sister Eveline gave it to her young cousin, to whom she engaged herself.  But afterwards, when she went to live with a gay and heartless aunt of mine, she broke her promise to him for the sake of a richer match.  The day that she was married, our cousin far away saw the black letters turn red upon the signet-ring.”

“Oh, Miss Agnes!” I exclaimed.

“And why should not letters change?” she asked, abruptly; and I saw her eyes look out dreamily, as if at something I did not see.  “The letter clothes the spirit; and the spirit gives life to the form.  A face grows lovely or unlovely with the spirit that lies behind it.  I cannot say if there be a spirit in such things.  Yet what we have worn we give a value to.  It has an expression in our eyes.  Do we give it all that expression, or has it some life of its own?”

She interrupted herself, and went on:—­

“I had known that Ernest was not true to me.  I had known it by the words he wrote to me.  They did not have the ring of pure silver; there was a clang to them.  When Fanny read aloud the loss of that ring, it spoke to a suspicion that was lying in the depth of my heart, and roused it into life.  My little Jeanie, I was very sad then.

“You do not know how deeply I loved Ernest Carr.  You do not know how I might have loved your brother George,—­yes, the noble, upright George.  He loved me, and treated me most tenderly; he found this home for me.  I did not banish him from it,—­he would have stayed all these years in Calcutta, if it had not been for me,—­so he said.  You cannot understand how it was that Ernest Carr, whom I had known before, should have impressed me more.  You do not know, yet, that we cannot command our love,—­that it does not always follow where our admiration leads.  I loved Ernest for his very faults.  The fascinations that made the world, its prizes, its money, its fame, so attractive to him, won me as I saw them in him.  It is terrible to think of my last meeting with him; but his fate seems to me not so awful as the fate towards which he was hurrying,—­the life which could never have satisfied him.”

She left off speaking, and dreamed on, her eyes and thoughts far away.  And I, too, dreamed.  I fancied my brother George coming home, and that he would meet with that ring somehow.  I knew it must come back to her.  And it did; and he came with it.