Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/319

Rh women wore engagement-rings with their wedding-rings, and he had asked Mrs. Barton to help him pick one out. He had drawn twenty-five dollars from his savings-bank account, to pay for the ring. The stone in it wasn't very large, but it was larger than twenty-five dollars ever could have bought. In the midst of the purchase of the ring Mrs. Barton had asked Nathan please to call up the house by telephone, and tell them that she'd be a little late for lunch. In his absence she and the clerk had changed the price tags.

Mrs. Barton supposed that Rebecca had long been wearing the pretty little ring which it had so rejoiced her heart to pay for in part. But Rebecca had never seen it. It had been lying quietly all this time in the top drawer of Nathan's chiffonier.

He hadn't meant to keep it so long, but he couldn't mail it immediately because he was supposed to be in New Zealand at the time, or some such remote place, and when he might have sent it without suspicion, he had begun to be afraid that any reminder of his claims might be unwelcome to the girl who had jumped so eagerly at his suggestion that he postpone his return.

He pondered over what to do with the little useless symbol as he made preparations to move his belongings out of the room that had been his so long. For so many months he had been accustomed to take out the dainty little platinum circlet, with the single pure white stone, and gaze upon it, as his thoughts hovered tenderly about Rebecca, that now the sight of it was painful to him. The little velvet-lined jewel-box that held the precious crystal so like Rebecca herself, had become a little velvet-lined casket that held something