form, such as figures or fleur-de-lis, yet ran around the ring in a perfectly definite device of curves and points, peculiar and distinct.
"The carving in stone was larger, of course," Barney pronounced. "But identical; absolutely identical." And he looked up again at her.
"Yes," Ethel said. "Yes; I thought so."
He closed his hand in a spasm of emotion which he sought to control by turning away and walking to the other end of the room. "It was there," he said almost inaudibly. "I saw it."
For a moment more Ethel stood dulled with feeling for him,—for this boy from the Indian shack in the Charlevoix woods finding, at last, something which traced to his ring and to himself. Then her thought went to that photograph upstairs; since its discovery, she had prepared several ways of bringing it to him, but now she did something quite unplanned.
Five or six years ago, Oliver had had a portrait of Agnes painted; it was hanging in the music room just beyond the drawing-room; and Ethel went there and turned on the lights.
"Mr. Loutrelle," she summoned Barney. "Did you ever meet her?"
He had put away his ring and had quite regained possession of himself; he gazed at the beautiful portrait admiringly at once but without any sign of recognition.
"She's rather a wonder, isn't she?" he turned to Ethel and then back to the portrait, in his interest. "Who is she?"
"Did you ever meet her?" Ethel persisted.
Barney shifted his position slightly to view the picture in a different light.
