“I wish Rosalind was here,” she thought.

When at length she made up her mind to go back, the magician was at work and greeted her just as usual.  Belle wondered if she had not dreamed it after all.  While he went into the next room to make change and receipt the bill, she looked for the ring she and Rosalind had hung on a nail beside the door.  It was gone.  Had any one ever known such a perplexing state of affairs?

The magician must have wondered what made the usually merry Belle so grave, for he asked if she was well as he gave her the bill.

As she walked slowly homeward, she noticed a large, dignified gentleman coming toward her.  He did not belong to Friendship, she knew, and she wondered a little who he might be.  He looked down on her benevolently through his spectacles as he passed, and for a moment seemed about to speak.  Belle quickly forgot him, however, for the ring occupied her thoughts to the exclusion of everything else.  Even the story so fascinating an hour ago, had lost its charm.

“Does your head ache?” her mother asked, seeing her sitting on the doorstep, her chin in her hand, her book unopened beside her.

“No, mother; I am just thinking,” was Belle’s reply.

She was trying to decide whom to tell.  “I wish father was at home,” she said to herself.

She went to bed with the matter still undecided, and the first thing she thought of when she opened her eyes the next day was the ring.  A conversation overheard between her mother and Manda, the cook, added to her uneasiness.

“Miss Mary, did you know there was a ‘tective loafin’ round town?”

“A detective?  No, I did not.  If there is, it won’t make any difference to you and me,” answered Mrs. Parton.

“Maybe it don’t make no difference to white folks, but looks like they’s always ’spicioning niggers,” continued Manda, with a shake of her head.  “Tilly ’lows it’s that thar ring of old Marse Gilpin’s.”

“Hardly,” said Mrs. Parton, with a laugh.  Belle, remembering the stranger, wondered if it might not be true.

Such talk among the servants of Friendship was nothing new.  Since the first excitement over the disappearance of the ring, it had broken out periodically; but to Belle this morning it seemed a strange coincidence.  Suppose some one else had seen the ring in Morgan’s possession?  And now it occurred to her to tell Miss Celia.

On her way to the Fairs’ she met the stranger again, this time in front of Mrs. Graham’s school.  He was looking about him with an air of interest, and as Belle approached he asked if this was not the Bishop residence.

“It was,” she answered, “but it is a school now.”

The gentleman thanked her and walked on.

“I believe he is a detective,” she said to herself.

Celia was in her usual place in the arbor bending over a piece of embroidery, when Belle found her.