“How he came by it I’ve yet to find out,” answered the man, “and if that’s true and you thought to hoodwink Mary Jane and me also by a trick like that, then you’re a bad lot and not worth your keep to any man.  But all that matters to me be this:  you disobeyed me on your own showing and risked a valuable jewel, messing about on the moor for vanity, or some worse reason.  And them that be careless of a lover’s wishes before marriage won’t care a cuss for ’em after.  In a word, I’ve done with you.  This is the last of a lot of pin-pricks you’ve given me lately, and I’ve caught ideas and opinions from you during the past month that made me ask myself some difficult questions.  It’s off, you understand.”

’Twas true she’d been saying things to shake up James pretty frequent; but this was better than her highest hopes, of course.  She hid her joy, however, and put her apron up to her eyes and shook her slim shoulders a bit; then, as he was going, she told him a thing that astonished him.

“Whether or no,” said Cora, “the amber heart, trash though it is, be mine, not yours, James, and I’ll thank you to return it to the lawful owner.  Since you be going to say ‘good-bye,’ we’ll part friends, but thicky necklace is mine, whatever your godless intentions.”

He glared at her, stuffed the toy in his pocket and went back to his pony without a word.  But she followed him down the pathway and smiled at him as he mounted, and even dared to rub the pony’s nose, for she’d often been suffered to ride the creature herself.

“If you won’t give me the amber heart, Jimmy, I’ll have you up for breach,” she said.  And then he let fall a few crooked words and drove his heels into the beast and galloped off in a proper fury of rage, cussing the whole sex to hell and Cora Dene in particular.

With that she went in and told her aunt the tale; but now she was all shame and grief, and after she’d given the details and said how James White had cast her off, she vowed that her last day on earth had dawned.

“I’d call on the hills to cover me if they would do so,” sobbed Cora.  “But as they will not, I’ll call on the river, and I’ll go and drown myself to-night, for I can’t face Little Silver no more after this downfall.”

And Mrs. Dene, who had always thought a lot of James White and been proud of the match, weren’t particular helpful, nor yet comforting.  In fact, she was very disappointed about it and lost her temper with Cora.  So the bedraggled maiden went out of her sight and looked as never she’d looked before.  And on the evening of that day, under cover of darkness, she met Nick Caunter and heard his news.