iar, a coward, and one who strikes from behind--that is it, isn't
it? You kept the faith, and I didn't fight the good fight, eh? Well, let
it stand so. Will you permit me to keep this ring? The saint needed it to
remind her to punish the sinner. The sinner would like to keep it now, for
then he would have a hope that the saint would forgive him some day."

The bitterness of his tone was merged at last into a strange tenderness
and hopelessness.

She did not look at him. She did not wish him to see the tears spring
suddenly to her eyes. She brought her voice to a firm quietness. She
thought of the woman, Mrs. Gladney, who was coming; of his child, whom he
did not recognize. She looked down toward the abbey. The girl was walking
there between old Mr. Margrave and Baron. She had once hated both the
woman and the child. She knew that to be true to her blood she ought to
hate them always, but there crept into her heart now a strange feeling of
pity for both. Perhaps the new interest in her life was driving out
hatred. There was something more. The envelope she had found that day on
the moor was addressed to that woman's husband, from whom she had been
separated--no one knew why--for years. What complication and fresh misery
might be here?

"You may keep the ring," she said.

"Thank you," was his reply, and he put it on his finger, looking down at
it with an enigmatical expression. "And is there nothing more?"

She willfully misconstrued his question. She took the torn pieces of
envelope from her pocket and handed them to him. "These are yours," she
said.

He raised his eyebrows. "Thank you again. But I do not see their value.
One could almost think you were a detective, you are so armed."

"Who is he? What is he to you?" she asked.

"He is an unlucky man, like myself, and my best friend. He helped me out
of battle, murder and sudden death more than once, and we shared the same
blanket times without number."

"Where is he now?" she said in a whisper, not daring to look at him lest
she should show how disturbed she was.

"He is in a hospital in New York."

"Has he no friends?"

"Do I count as nothing at all?"

"I mean no others--no wife or family?"

"He has a wife, and she has a daughter. That is all I know. They have been
parted through some cause. Why do you ask? Do you know him?"

"No, I do not know him."

Do you know the wife? Please tell me, for at his request I am trying to
find her, and I have failed