Miss Silver Deals With Death by Patricia Wentworth Page B

bored! She smiled a wide, decorative smile and held out the hand with the diamond on it.
    “This ring?”
    “Yes. Where did you get it?”
    “Why, darling, you gave it to me of course. Fancy forgetting that!”
    His mother’s ring—on Carola Roland’s hand. The shock struck hard against every sense which declared her a stranger. It was the ring which he had intended to give to Meade. But it had been given already—to Carola Roland—to a stranger. You do not give your mother’s ring to a stranger. You give it only when you give your name as well. He said in a stiff, strained voice,
    “May I look at it? I’ll give it back again. I want to be sure.”
    Without any hesitation at all she slipped it off and put it into his hand.
    Half turning from her, he held it up for the light to strike upon the inner circle. If it was his mother’s ring her initials would be there, and a date—the date of her engagement to his father. It was her engagement ring. The light struck on a faint M. B. and a date too worn to read. M. B. for Mary Ballantyne. And the date should be June 1910. It was the hardest thing in the world to give back Mary Armitage’s ring to the hand with the scarlet nails. When he had done it he knew that he could do no more. The thing was beyond him. His words, the ring, declared this woman his wife. Heart and flesh denied her. Every instinct slammed the door against the evidence. If there was a marriage, she must prove it. He said so.
    “This goes for nothing. You are taking advantage of the fact that I have lost my memory. If there was a marriage, you can jog yours and let my solicitors know where it took place. I don’t believe that there was a marriage, or that you can prove it.”
    CHAPTER 17
    Meade had scarcely shut the door upon Giles, when Ivy Lord put her head round the kitchen door.
    “If you please, Miss Meade, I’d like to go out to the post.”
    “All right, Ivy.”
    “Will you be going out, miss?”
    “No, I don’t think so—not tonight.”
    Ivy hesitated.
    “Mrs. Underwood said she wouldn’t be back till half past seven. If you wouldn’t mind lighting the gas under the steamer at seven—full till the water’s hot, and then down to a point—”
    Meade found a smile. It took exactly five minutes to reach the pillar-box at the corner and return. The post was most undoubtedly a young man. She said,
    “Of course I will.”
    She went back into the sitting-room to wait for Giles. She heard Ivy come running out of her room in a hurry to be off. The door of the flat opened and shut. She tried to think what sort of young man Ivy would have. She was such a funny little bit of a thing. But something nice about her too—queerness and niceness in layers, like streaky bacon… What a thing to think of. Anything was better than thinking about Giles and Carola Roland. Thoughts didn’t ask whether you wanted them or not, they came in—some of them like visitors tapping at the door, and when you opened it, instead of a friend on the doorstep you found an enemy there; some of them like ghosts tapping at the windows and calling strangely in words which you couldn’t understand; some of them like thieves creeping in to steal; and some breaking in with violence like a plundering army. A shiver went over her. People kept saying how mild the weather was, but she was cold.
    She looked at her watch and wondered when Giles would come. It was between twenty and a quarter to seven. She mustn’t forget to light the gas under the steamer, or Ivy would get into trouble. Giles had been gone nearly a quarter of an hour—
    The front door bell rang, and she ran. But it wasn’t Giles. It was Agnes Lemming with a big dress-box. She had set it down to ring the bell; now she picked it up and came into the little hall with her head up and a flush on her cheeks. She was in her old purple coat and skirt again, but somehow she looked different—younger, and with something taut and purposeful about her.
    “Are you