e diamond ring is gone--is stolen."

He looked at her in sheer amazement. It was clear enough that he did
not, immediately, know what she was talking of. "The ring gone?
Stolen, mother?"

Suddenly he burst into a laugh--so hearty, so spontaneous, so wholly
foreign in its fine expression of good-natured raillery, to the tense
atmosphere of accusation on the part of Mrs. Vanderlyn and supreme
self-abnegation on the part of the old flute-player, which had, until
this time, been vibrant in the room, that it seemed strangely,
shockingly incongruous.

"John!" said his mother, in a tone of stern reproof, demanding of her
son for the victim of misfortune consideration which she, herself, had
scarcely shown, "you must not laugh. It is too heartless--right in
this poor man's presence!"

This stopped his laughter, for it puzzled him. He looked from one of
his companions to the other with an air of most complete bewilderment.
"What's Herr Kreutzer got to do with it?" he asked.

"Why, he has just confessed."

"Confessed to what?"

"That he is guilty."

Kreutzer interrupted earnestly and hastily. He did not wish to have
her even tell her son that Anna ever had been suspected. "Yes," he
assured him earnestly, "I--I alone am guilty."

The youth's evident amazement doubled. Sinking into a chair he looked
from his mother to Herr Kreutzer, from Herr Kreutzer to his mother,
with an expression of bewilderment so genuine that, for the first
time, his mother was a bit in doubt about her cleverness, for the
first time Herr Kreutzer wondered if there might not, somewhere, be a
ray of hope for him and for his Anna.

"Guilty of what?" said Vanderlyn, at length. "Of being the father of
the dearest girl in all the world, who has promised to become my
wife?"

CHAPTER X

"Your wife!" cried Mrs. Vanderlyn. "Good heavens!" She sank back in
her chair as much aghast as Kreutzer had been when she had amazed him
by accusing Anna.

"And I bought that ring and gave it to her," John went on. "The dear
girl! It's our engagement ring."

Kreutzer, who had been staring at him with the strained and anxious
look of one who sees salvation just in sight, but cannot understand
its aspect, quite, relaxed now and, also, sank into a chair.

"Oh, mine Gott sie dank!" he fervently exclaimed. "Mine Gott sie dank!
You gave it to her! Oh, oh, oh, thank God!"

"Why certainly I gave it to her. It's our engagement ring. Bless her
heart--she's promi