look at and then return? Why shouldn't
you keep it? It's got your name on. He can't give it to anybody else,
unless there's more than one Sally down his alley, which I should
think is very doubtful. What do you mean--you can't keep it? You make
me feel like Job's wife."

Sally unclasped the bangle and laid it back in the little velvet box
with lingering fingers. Then she picked up the letter.

"Read that," she said.

Janet swept her eyes to it. To her, as she read, it seemed to be the
condensation of more than one letter that had been written before.
A man, she argued, who gives such a present, is more than probably
in love; and a man who is in love, cannot write so directly to the
point in his first attempt.

This was the letter:--

"DEAR MISS BISHOP--"

(To call her "Sally" in diamonds and "Miss Bishop" in ink, was
ridiculous. Ink was infinitely cheaper; and if he could afford the
one, then why not the other?)

"I make it a habit to discharge debts. With this to you, I wipe out
my debit sheet and stand clear. You remember my bet on the Hammersmith
'bus. I hope you were none the worse for my foolishness of our last
evening. I have regretted my thoughtlessness many times since.

"Yours sincerely,
"J. HEWITT TRAILL."

"What foolishness?" asked Janet, looking up quickly at the end. "What
did he do?"

Of the fight and her fainting, Sally had told her nothing. She told
her nothing now. The fear that Traill might be thought selfish--a
thought which love had refused to give entrance to in her own
mind--had led her to defend him with silence. Now she told the
deliberate lie, unblushingly, unfearingly.

"He did nothing," she replied; "that's only a joke of his. But you
see, I can't keep the bangle," she went on quickly, covering the lie
with words, as Eugene Aram hid the body of his victim with dead leaves.
"I must send it back to him. I never knew he really meant it when
he made that bet. I never even thought he meant it when he reminded
me of it that day after lunch."

"No more he did mean it," said Janet, sharply. "If he'd seen you again
and again--he'd never have paid it--not as he's pretending to pay
it now."

"Pretending?"

"Yes."

Sally took up the bangle in her fingers.

"You don't call this pretence, do you?" she asked. "Why, it's worth
even much more than he said in his bet. He paid more than ten pounds
for this."

"Exactly," s