The Connop Greens were lavish with sapphires, the
De Brownes with pearls, and the Smijths with opal. Mrs. Gore sent a
huge carbuncle which Arabella strongly suspected to be glass. From
her paternal parent there came a pair of silver nut-crackers, and
from the maternal a second-hand dressing-case newly done up. Old
Mrs. Green gave her a couple of ornamental butter-boats, and
salt-cellars innumerable came from distant Greens. But there was a
diamond ring--with a single stone,--from a friend, without a name,
which she believed to be worth all the rest in money value. Should
she send it back to Lord Rufford, or make a gulp and swallow it?
How invincible must be the good-nature of the man when he could
send her such a present after such a rating as she had given him in
the park at Rufford! "Do as you like," Mounser Green said when she
consulted him.
She very much wished to keep it. "But what am I to say, and to
whom?"
"Write a note to the jewellers saying that you have got it." She
did write to the jeweller saying that she had got the ring,--"from
a friend;" and the ring with the other tribute went to Patagonia.
He had certainly behaved very badly to her, but she was quite sure
that he would never tell the story of the ring to any one. Perhaps
she thought that as she had spared him in the great matter of eight
thousand pounds, she was entitled to take this smaller contribution.
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