"I fancied so till to-night," Enid replied. "Indeed, I hardly knew what to think. Sometimes I imagined that Reginald Henson had it, at other times I imagined that it was utterly gone. But the mere fact that Henson possesses a copy practically convinces me that he has the original. As I said before, a true copy could not have been made from mere instructions. And if I could only get the original our troubles are all over." "But I don't see how the ring has anything to do with--" "With the family dishonour. No, I am coming to that. We arrive at the time, seven years ago, when my aunt and Lord Littimer and Frank were all living happily at Littimer Castle. I told you just now that the Carfax estates adjoin the Littimer property. The family is still extant and powerful, but the feud between the two houses has never ceased. Of course, people don't carry on a vendetta these peaceful days, but the families have not visited for centuries. "There was a daughter Claire, whom Frank Littimer got to know by some means or other. But for the silly family feud nobody would have noticed or cared, and there would have been an end to the matter, because Frank has always loved my sister Chris, and we all knew that he would marry her some of these days. "Lord Littimer was furiously angry when he heard that Frank and Claire had got on speaking terms. He imperiously forbade any further intercourse, and General Carfax did the same. The consequence was that these two foolish young people elected to fancy themselves greatly aggrieved, and so a kind of Romeo and Juliet, Montague and Capulet, business sprang up. There were secret meetings, meetings entirely innocent, I believe, and a correspondence which became romantic and passionate on Claire Carfax's side. The girl had fallen passionately in love with Frank, whilst he regarded the thing as a mere pastime. He did not know then, indeed nobody seemed to know till afterwards, that there was insanity in the poor girl's family, though Hatherly Bell's friend, Dr. Heritage, who then had a practice near Littimer, warned us as well as he could. Nobody dreamt how far the thing had gone. "Then those letters of Claire's fell into Lord Littimer's hands. He found them and locked them up in his safe. Frank, furious at being treated like a boy, swore to break open the safe and get his letters back. He did so. And in the same safe, and in the same drawer, was Prince Rupert's ring. When Lord Littimer missed the letters he missed the ring also and a large sum of money in notes that he had just received from his tenants. Frank had stolen the ring and the money, or so it seemed. I shall not soon forget that day.