h and his wife?"

"No. No! And they wouldn't want me."

"That seems queer to me: that any one should have the chance of keeping
you with them, and not want you ... How would it be for you to go on the
same ship with me, and find a little home somewhere on an allowance I
could make you out of that fund? You see, you are my wife in the eyes of
the law, so I'm bound to support you. And you're bound to let me do it,
if I can do it honestly."

Annesley flung up her arms in a gesture of abandonment. "Let it go at
that," she sighed, "until I can think of something better."

"Very well. We won't argue that part yet. The thing to make sure of at
the moment is this: Do I get a cable, say on the day everyone's leaving
Valley House, calling me back to America on urgent business, and do I
take you with me?"

Annesley's thoughts raced through her head and would not stop. Knight did
not speak. He was waiting with outward patience for her decision.

It seemed that she would never know what to say. She was about to tell
him in despair that she must have the rest of the day to make up her
mind, but before she could speak Parker knocked at the door.

"I'll go with you," the girl said, hastily. "On the ship. But after
that----"

Parker knocked again.

"Come in!" called Annesley.

"Thank you," Knight said, getting up from his chair near her bed.

"_Don't_ thank me. I----"

But Parker had opened the door. All that was conventional and agreeably
commonplace in the lives of happy, well-to-do people seemed to enter the
room with her.

CHAPTER XXI

THE DEVIL'S ROSARY

Ruthven Smith summoned courage to ask for a few words alone with Knight
that Easter morning, in order to explain as well as apologize for the
"seeming liberty he had taken." By dint of stammering, and punctuating
his sentences with short, dry coughs, he made "a clean breast," as he
called it, of the "whole business."

He had come to Valley House, he confessed, because of an anonymous
letter, written apparently by a person of education, to inform him that
the Malindore diamond had come into the possession of the Nelson Smiths.
Whether they were aware of its identity, the writer was not sure; but in
any case their ownership of the jewel was kept secret.

Having got so far in his story, Ruthven Smith decided that the easiest
way of finishing it would be to produce the letter. He did so (a
typewritten sheet of plain creamy paper, in an envelope post-marked