It was the forgotten locket I had found in the library on that March
afternoon before the Merivales' musical. A change passed over my own
face at sight of it, and it was with some agitation I answered
Hortense's timid question:
"It is a strange thing how you came by this. I have never seen it but
once, the night I found it, until now."
"You found it then," she murmured slowly with her eyes still buried in
my face. "Have you ever opened it?"
I laughed dryly and said, "It is a queer thing, isn't it, but I never
have."
"Open it now," she interrupted seriously. I took it between my fingers
and after repeated efforts managed to open it. There were two small
photographs inside. One was Ernest Dalton's--and the other was mine!
A crimson flush deluged my face and neck, my hand trembled and the
locket fell into Hortense's lap. She raised her solemn eyes now grown
sadder and more solemn than ever, and said in a voice more plaintive
and pleading than any voice I ever heard before,
"Then you know him?"
I was mystified. I could hardly remember afterwards what I had
answered to her strange question. I think I said in a seemingly
indifferent voice,
"Is it Mr. Dalton?"
But I know she looked at me with an expression of infinite reproachful
longing and asked,
"Have you a doubt of it?"
"But I never gave him a picture of mine," I argued, "and moreover, I
never had pictures taken like this one. If it is he, where did he get
this, and why did he put it here?"
She shot a wincing, suspicious glance at me from under her white lids
and repeated huskily,
"You never gave him this picture?"
"On my word, I did not Hortense," I answered.
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