Manners and customs -- Fiction; Short stories, American
“That will be enough now,” she went on, taking out her ten-pound note.
She put Lady Gower’s ring back upon her finger and picked up Philip’s
ring and watch with the pleasure of one who has come into a great
fortune. She turned back at the door.
“Oh,” she stammered, “in case any one should inquire, you are not to say
who bought these.”
“No, miss, certainly not,” said the woman. Helen gave the direction to
the cabman and, closing the doors of the hansom, sat looking down at the
watch and the ring, as they lay in her lap. The thought that they had
been his most valued possessions, which he had abandoned forever, and
that they were now entirely hers, to do with as she liked, filled her
with most intense delight and pleasure. She took up the heavy gold ring
and placed it on the little finger of her left hand; it was much too
large, and she removed it and balanced it for a moment doubtfully in the
palm of her right hand. She was smiling, and her face was lit with shy
and tender thoughts. She cast a quick glance to the left and right as
though fearful that people passing in the street would observe her, and
then slipped the ring over the fourth finger of her left hand. She gazed
at it with a guilty smile and then, covering it hastily with her other
hand, leaned back, clasping it closely, and sat frowning far out before
her with puzzled eyes.
To Carroll all roads led past Helen’s studio, and during the summer,
while she had been absent in Scotland it was one of his sad pleasures to
make a pilgrimage to her street and to pause opposite the house and look
up at the empty windows of her rooms.
It was during this daily exercise that he learned, through the arrival
of her luggage, of her return to London, and when day followed day
without her having shown any desire to see him or to tell him of her
return he denounced himself most bitterly as a fatuous fool.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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