"It's a horrid bore, isn't it?" I ventured to suggest.
"What?"
"Why, the feud."
"Oh!"
After this there was silence again till we reached the spot where our roads diverged. I reined up my horse and lifted my hat. Miss Marston looked up suddenly.
"Thank you so much. Yes, it is rather a bore, isn't it?" And with a little laugh and a little blush she trotted off. Moreover, she looked over her shoulder once before a turn of the road hid her from my sight.
"It's a confounded bore," said I to myself as I rode away alone.
My father was a very firm man. I am not Sir Matthew Marston's son, and I do not scruple to describe him as an obstinate man. But in this world the people who say "yes" generally beat the people who say "no"—hence comes progress or decadence, which you will—and although both Sir Matthew and my father insisted that the acquaintance between Miss Marston and myself should not continue, the acquaintance did continue. We met out hunting, and also when we were not hunting anything except one another. The truth is that we had laid our heads together (only metaphorically, I am sorry to say), and determined that the moment for an amnesty had arrived. It was forty years or more since the colonel had—or had not—stolen the Maharajah's rubies. Many suns had gone down on the wrath of both families. A treaty must be made. The Marstons must agree to say no more about the crime, the Merridews must consent to forgive the false accusation. The Maharajah's rubies had vanished from the earth; their evil deeds must live after them no longer. Sylvia and I agreed on all these points one morning in the woods among the primroses.
"Of course, though, the colonel took them," said Sylvia, by way of closing the discussion.
"Nothing of the sort," said I, rather emphatically.
Sylvia sprang away from me; a beautiful, stormy color flooded her cheeks.
"You say," she exclaimed indignantly, "that you—that you—that you—that you—well, that you care for me, and yet"
"The colonel certainly took them," I cried hastily.
"Of course he did," said Sylvia, with a radiant smile.
I assumed a most aggrieved expression.
"You profess," said I, plaintively, "to have—to have—to have—well, to have some pity on me, and yet"
"He didn't take them!" cried Sylvia, impulsively.
That matter seemed to be settled quite satisfactorily, and we passed into another.
"How dare I tell papa?" asked Sylvia, apprehensively.
"Well, I shall have a row with the governor," I reflected, ruefully.
"Horrid old rubies! I wish they were at the bottom of the sea!" said Sylvia.
"I wish they were round your neck," said I.
"How can you, Mr. Merridew?" murmured Sylvia.
"I could say a great deal more than that," I cried. But she would not let me.
Now, as I went home from this interview I was, I protest, more filled with regrets that the Maharajah's rubies could not adorn and be adorned by Sylvia's neck than with apprehensions as to the effect my communication might have upon my father. Whether Colonel Merridew had stolen them or not became a subordinate question; the great problem was, Where were they? Why were they not round Sylvia's neck? I suffered a sense of personal loss, hardly less acute than the emotion that had brought Sir George Marston post-haste to the colonel's house forty years before. I was so engrossed with this aspect of the case that, as my father and I sat over our cigarettes after dinner, I exclaimed inadvertently:
"How splendidly they'd have suited her, by Jove!"
Whenever anybody in our family spoke of "they" or "them," without further identification, he was understood to refer to the Maharajah's rubies.
"Who would they have suited?" asked my father.
"Why, Sylvia Marston," I said.
When you have an awkward disclosure to make, there is nothing like committing yourself to it at once by an irremediable discretion. It blocks the way back and clears the way forward. My mention of Sylvia Marston defined the position with absolute clearness.
"What's Sylvia Marston to you?" asked my father, scornfully.
"The whole world, and more," I answered, fervently.
My father rang the bell for coffee. When it had been served he remarked:
"I think you had better take a run on
