The girl was in an ecstacy of delight, as what girl of her age would not have been? The case contained jewels enough to stock a shop. I wondered where some of them had come from--and if Crampton knew more of the source of their origin than I did. Wholly unconscious that there might be stories connected with some of the trinkets which might not be pleasant hearing, the girl, girl-like, proceeded to try them on. By the time she had finished they were all turned out upon the table. The box was empty. She announced the fact. "There! That's all!" Her lover took up the empty case. "No secret repositories, or anything of that sort? Hullo!--speak of angels!--what's this?" "What's what?" The young girl's head and her lover's were bent together over the empty box. Sandys' fingers were feeling about inside it. "Is this a dent in the leather, or is there something concealed beneath it?" What Sandys referred to was sufficiently obvious. The bottom of the box was flat, except in one corner, where a slight protuberance suggested, as Sandys said, the possibility of there being something concealed beneath. Miss Crampton, already excited by her father's gift, at once took it for granted that it was the case. "How lovely!" she exclaimed. She clapped her hands. "I do believe there's a secret hiding-place." If there was, it threatened to baffle our efforts at discovery. We all tried our hands at finding, it, but tried in vain. Crampton gave it up. "I'll have the case examined by an expert. He'll soon be able to find your secret hiding-place, though, mind you, I don't say that there is one." There was an exclamation from young Sandys. "Don't you? Then you'd be safe if you did, because there is!" Miss Crampton looked eagerly over his shoulder. "Have you found it? Yes! Oh, Charlie! Is there anything inside?" "Rather, there's a ring. What a queer old thing! Whatever made your mother keep it hidden away in there?" I knew, in an instant. I recognised it, although I had only seen it once in my life, and that once was sundered by the passage of nineteen years. Mr. Sandys was holding in his hand the cameo ring which I had seen Lilian Trowbridge remove from Decimus Vernon's finger, and which was own brother to the ring described in the tattered volume, which she had directed her husband to send me--"as a memory"--as having been one of Lucrezia Borgia's pretty playthings. I was so confounded by the rush of emotions occasioned by its sudden discovery, that, for the moment, I was tongue-tied. Sandys turned to Miss. Crampton. "It's too large for you. It's large enough for me. May I try it on?" I hastened towards him. The prospect of what might immediately ensue spurred me to inarticulate speech. "Don't! For God's sake, don't! Give that ring to me, sir!" They stared at me, as well they might. My sudden and, to them, meaningless agitation was a bolt from the blue. Young Sandys withdrew from me the hand which held the ring.