"I may never find it; but I am not without a clue. Look here!" I added, suddenly, "I will confide in you all. Two of you are cousins, the other is, I am sure, my true friend. Look at my ruby ring." I held up my hand--my dirty hand. I pulled the ring off my third finger. "You know the secret of the ring," I said to Rupert Valentine. "Open it carefully; let it show its secret chamber. You thought that secret chamber revealed nothing; that it was empty and without its secret. You were mistaken. Look again, but carefully--very carefully." I was so excited that I absolutely forgot that I was addressing my words to three comparative strangers. I gave the ring back to Captain Valentine. "Be very, very careful," I repeated. He looked at me gravely, took the ring over to the light, motioned to his brother to follow him, and touched the spring. The central ruby revolved out of its place, the serpents' heads opened wide their doors, and the little chamber inside the ring was once more visible. "Raise that white paper," I said; "there is writing under it." "Rosamund, you shake all over," said Lady Ursula. I flashed an impatient glance at her. "Can you wonder?" I said. "Yes, perhaps you can. It is impossible for you to understand. If you wanted money as badly as I do, and saw the bare possibility of getting it, you too would shake--you would find it impossible to control your emotion." Again Tom Valentine's eyes met mine. Now they were less approving. Their glance expressed a sense of being puzzled, of being disappointed. Meanwhile, Captain Valentine, lifting the tiny portion of paper, was trying to decipher the very minute writing on the other side. "You cannot read that with the naked eye," I remarked. "Has any one here got a magnifying glass?" "I have," said my cousin Tom. He took a tiny little lens, exquisitely mounted, out of his pocket, and handed it gravely to his brother. Captain Valentine applied the lens to his eye, looked at the ring, and uttered an exclamation. "Look in the Chamber of Myths," he read aloud. "`Look in the Chamber of Myths!' What does this mean? I always thought Geoffrey Rutherford was off his head. Dear Miss Lindley, are you allowing wild words of this sort to guide you?" "There is method in this madness," I returned, "for this is the Chamber of Myths." "This room, this lovely room?" exclaimed Lady Ursula. "Yes; it was one of Cousin Geoffrey's fancies to name each room in his house. This was called by him the `Chamber of Myths'--why, I cannot tell you. The fact I can verify. Go to the door and look." I brought them all to the door of the room, pushed aside the sliding panel, and showed the name in white letters on a dark ground. CHAPTER SIXTEEN. VANITY.