I felt myself go limp with apprehension. It was clear to me that she had thought the fortunes of young girls—as she regarded Morwenna and me—were not worth telling. Little did she know! I had a vague idea how this fortune-telling was done. There was a good deal of chance in it, I had no doubt, but I did believe that flashes of truth occasionally emerged; and if something really violent had happened … it might be possible to detect it. I felt that she may have seen something in my hand which she could not explain. Who would have thought that a girl of my age could be involved in such an experience; and she was transferring it to Grace.
“You will be strong,” she was saying. “You will overcome.”
The gypsy seemed a little shaken. Her eyes were fixed on Grace’s face.
Grace withdrew her hand. “Well … thank you …”
“It’s trouble … trouble … but nature made you strong. You will overcome. All will be well. You’ll find happiness in the end.”
Grace opened her purse and gave the woman money.
“Come on,” she said. “We shall be late back and that will not do.”
The gypsy was silent. She slipped the money into her pocket and sat down.
We walked away.
“We should never have stopped,” said Grace. “It was a lot of nonsense.”
“It cost a lot of money,” commented Jack. “You could have bought six slices of gingerbread and a pink pig with what you gave her.”
“It was rather silly of us,” admitted Grace. Her voice was cold and her face looked different somehow.
She might say it was a lot of nonsense but I believed the gypsy had frightened her.
I looked over my shoulder. The woman was still seated by the side of the road staring after us.
I told my mother of the encounter.
“She promised Morwenna and me that we should go to London and find rich husbands.”
“You’ll have to go up for a season, but that’s some time away. And as to the rich husband … we’ll have to wait and see.”
“I think she rather upset Miss Gilmore. She talked about some trouble.”
“One doesn’t take any notice of them.”
“Not unless they tell you something nice.”
“That’s the idea,” said my mother, smiling. “By the way, soon we shall be going to London. I’ve been talking to Grace about new clothes. She says she could make them. I wonder if she could. One doesn’t want to look countrified. What passes here might look a little dowdy in London. But I thought we might give her a try with the blue linen. It’s just the color for you.”
Grace was very anxious to try with the linen. She came to my room with some patterns which she wanted to discuss with me, and she had the blue linen with her.
She said: “I thought we’d have a little piping round the sleeves … as it is in this pattern. Don’t you think that would look nice? I think a lightish brown … very light … would look effective.”
“Yes, perhaps,” I said. “I have a scarf which I think would be just the right color to match up with the blue. It will be in that drawer behind you.”
“May I?” she said, opening the drawer.
There was a short silence. She was staring at something in the drawer. She picked up the ring I had found at the pool. I had put it there when I came home and forgotten all about it.
“This gold ring …”she said. “Is it yours?”
I felt uneasiness gripping me as it always did when there was any reference to that day.
“Oh …” I stammered. I held out my hand for the ring. “I … I found it.”
“Found it? Where?”
“It … was when I had my accident. I remember it now. I picked it up without thinking.”
“On the beach?”
I did not answer. I ruffled my brows as though trying to remember … although I recalled perfectly well every detail of that fearful time.
“What? When you fell?”
“Y-yes … it must have been. I fell … and there was the ring.”
“On the beach,” she repeated. “And you picked it up then. Why?”
“I don’t know. I always pick up things. I suppose I do it without thinking … It’s difficult to remember … I must have seen the ring and picked it up and put it in my pocket.”
“It’s rather a nice one,” she said. “It is gold, I think. What are you going to do with it?”
“Oh … nothing.”
“You didn’t think of returning it to its owner.”
“I don’t know whose it is. I shouldn’t think any of the fishermen have a ring and it wouldn’t be theirs because they don’t come to that part of the beach. It might have been there a long time. Some visitor lost it I expect and it’s so long ago they’ve forgotten about it.”
“If you don’t want it … may I have it?”
“Of course.”
She slipped it onto the first finger of her right hand.
“This is the only one it fits,” she said.
I found the scarf and we set it side by side with the blue linen. But I was not really attending. It was incidents like that which shook me terribly and brought it all back to my memory.
Miss Gilmore seemed a little absent-minded too.
Grace Gilmore was quite a good horsewoman. My mother was constantly urging her to accompany me when I went riding.
“Angelet is so independent,” I heard her say. “She does love to ride off on her own. But I’d rather someone was with her.”
Grace Gilmore was nothing loath. There was little she seemed to like better than regarding herself as a member of the family.
We were riding along the beach one day when we came close to the boathouse. She pulled up suddenly.
“It must have been somewhere near here where you found the ring,” she said.
I nodded. I hated telling a lie, but it was necessary.
She was looking along the shore, past the boathouse to where the harbor was just visible. She took off the ring.
“Look at these initials inside it,” she said. “Did you notice?”
“No. I didn’t look at it … much. I just picked it up.”
“You weren’t in a fit state to examine it closely, I suppose.”
“No. I don’t know why I picked it up and put it in my pocket. Just force of habit, I expect. I wasn’t really thinking of it.”
“No, you wouldn’t at such a time. Do you see what the initials are?”
She handed me the ring. Engraved inside were the initials M.D. and W.B.
“I wonder who they are,” I said.
She took the ring from me. What a fool I had been to pick it up. If I tried to return it the people would want to know where I found it. It might well be that the owner of the ring had never been near the sea. Ben had talked of clues. This could be one of those. I wished that Grace had never found it. I would have thrown it away if I had remembered. I should have remembered. When one practiced deceit one had to be careful. Her next words made me shiver.
“Those initials M.D. What was the name of that man who escaped from Bodmin Jail?”
“I … er … I don’t remember.”
“It was Mervyn Duncarry, I’m sure. M.D. You see?”
“There could be lots of people with those initials.”
“He must have been here … on this beach. I feel certain it is his ring.”
“And who is W.B.?”
“Some woman I suppose who was fool enough to love him.”
She held the ring in the palm of her hand and then suddenly she flung it into the sea.
“I couldn’t wear the ring of a murderer, could I?”
“No,” I said vehemently, “of course you could not.”
She could not guess how relieved I was to see the end of that ring. It was what I had begun to see as a piece of incriminating evidence.
A Marriage in a Far Country
WE WERE GOING TO London to pay that long delayed visit to Uncle Peter and Aunt Amaryllis.