window, and was dilating upon its marvels, when Mr. Robert
Holt, her accepted lover, took in his clasp the small white hand
wandering so invitingly among the leaves of the huge palm, and glancing
at the finger which should have worn his ring, looked inquiringly into
her face.

"'O,' said she, interrupting her little speech to draw away her hand,
'you miss your diamond? I have it, sir. It lies very safe in my pocket;
it is a beautiful gem, but _your ring does not fit me_.'

"The way she said those words and the air with which she tossed back her
head, must have made one heart in that room beat joyously, but it did
not reassure me or subdue my secret apprehension.

"'Not fit!' her lover responded; and begged her to allow him to try it
on and see, but she shook her head with wilful coquetry, and turning to
the piano, commenced singing a gay little song that was like silver
bells, shaken by a sudden and mighty tempest.

"Even the Colonel felt the change in his daughter, though he never
guessed the cause, and came and went during the evening that followed,
with certain odd sighs that made my heart ache with strange forebodings.
Only her lover was unconscious, or if he felt the new and wayward force
and fire in her manner, attributed it to his own presence and
unspeakable devotion. Mr. Roger Holt, on the contrary, thoroughly
understood it. Though he was strangely calm, as calm now as he had
previously been alert and fiery, he never lost a gleam of her eye in his
direction, or a turn of her form towards the chair where he sat. But the
smile with which he contemplated her was not pleasant to me. It was
informed with self-consciousness, and a certain hard triumph, that made
it almost sinister. 'She has given her hand to the true man,' I mused,
'wherever her heart may be. But had she given it?' I began to doubt as I
began to muse. With that uncontrollable will of hers, she was capable of
anything; did she intend to break with Robert, now that she had seen
Roger? I detected no signs of it beyond the evident delight they took in
each other's presence. They were guilty of no further conversation of a
secret or intimate character, and when with the striking of the clock at
ten, Mr. Robert Holt rose to leave, his brother followed without any
demur, even preceding him in his departure and limiting his farewell to
a short brotherly pressure of Jacqueline's fair hand.

"But much may be conveyed in a pressure, or so I began to think