“This,” she said, while her lips quivered, “Lord Dunforth put upon my finger when he told me of his love. It has never been there since that day, when I believed he went away from me forever of his own accord. These other jewels were given me in honor of my approaching marriage, but I have never worn any of them, excepting this coral and diamond cross which Royal gave me, and which I wore to that ball, where I lost everything dear in life. I have no use for them, and henceforth they are all yours, dear, to do as you like with—if ever you feel that you can wear them for my sake, I wish you to do so.” “Oh, auntie, they seem too precious for me to wear; they seem like something sacred to me,” the young girl said, reverently, while her eyes lingered upon their beauty. “Then you will prize them all the more, dear, and I am glad that it is so—you will never wear them lightly, and they will never grow valueless to you. You have the cuff buttons already which Lord Dunforth gave me the same time with the coral cross.” “Are those—did you give them to me?” stammered Brownie, feeling that she had almost been sacrilegious in wearing anything so precious, and not know it. “Yes, dear, they were the only articles of his giving which I ever permitted myself to wear, and then only a few times. So, feeling that they ought to do somebody some good, I had them marked for you for your last birthday.” “I shall never wear them again without feeling that they are tenfold more precious than ever before,” the young girl said, with starting tears. She little knew that even then one of them was lost. She had removed her linen ulster upon returning home, and left her cuffs hanging in it. Miss Mehetabel now lifted the velvet bed, and laid it with all its glittering wealth upon the table near which she sat. Beneath it lay a locket of blue enamel and gold, studded with diamonds; a little bunch of dried flowers, a crumpled card, and a pair of soiled white kid gloves. “These,” Miss Mehetabel said, touching the flowers, “I wore in my hair that night, fastened with the butterfly; and these are the gloves—they bear the last touch of his hand. This is the card on which the Count de Lussan wrote his name.” She took up the locket with a tender touch. “This contains the face of the one man on earth to me. Open it, dear—I cannot.” Brownie took it, the great tears rolling over her flushed cheeks. It seemed so inexpressibly sad, and as if she, too, were about to look upon the face of the dead. She pressed the spring and it flew open. From one side of it there gazed up at her the dark, noble face of a man about twenty-five years of age. The fair girl gazed upon it for several moments in silence, then heaving a deep sigh, she said, softly: “He was grand, auntie!” “Put it away,” said Miss Mehetabel, with white lips, “and when I am dead come and get this chain and key, and wear it around your own neck as long as you live.”