“The ring first.”

Mary shrugged her shoulders.  She felt cool enough now.  It was going to be easy.  She turned to the bureau and began to pull things out of the drawer, scattering them anywhere.  She could not remember exactly where she had put the ring.  As she searched, she talked.

“There is nothing to be tragic about,” she said.  “I intended to give you your ring anyway—­some day.  And the medicine is nothing that will hurt.  It is only something to make me sleep so that I shan’t look a sight to-morrow.  I am taking only a little.  No one will know.  I shall not even oversleep.  But if Esther or any of them knew, they would make a fuss.  You must promise not to tell them—­before I give you the ring.  Just tell Esther that I do not want to be disturbed early.  I’ll wake myself, in plenty of time for the wedding.”

“In plenty of time for the wedding!” For a moment Amy wondered what it was about the phrase which sounded familiar?  Then she seemed to see, as in a dream, the vision of a young girl all in white, with flowers in her hands, sitting alone in a room waiting, watching a clock—­a clock which never quite came round to the hour of eleven on Tuesday.  Time has a great deal to do with weddings, evidently.  People who wish to be married must be ready at the fateful moment, otherwise they have to wait—­forever, perhaps.  “Plenty of time”—­suddenly a flash of direct inspiration seemed to coordinate her scattered faculties.  She saw clearly a plan, a beautiful, simple plan to prevent the marriage.  What if Mary should not wake in plenty of time for the wedding?  What if the hour, the wedding hour, should not find her ready?  The thing was so simple!  If one tablet would make Mary sleep, two would make her sleep longer.  For the moment she forgot even the ruby ring in her childish pleasure at such a clever idea.  Her worn face was lit by a satisfied smile as she swiftly, quietly dropped more tablets from the box into the glass—­one—­two—­she was not quite sure how many!

“Here is the ring,” said Mary turning at last from the disturbed drawer with a cardboard box in her hand.  It was the box from which Esther had taken the ring long before, but Mary was in too great a hurry to open it.  She did not doubt that it contained the ring.  For once in her life Mary thought she was playing fair.

They completed the exchange in silence, Mary wondering a little at the pleasant change which she saw in Amy’s face.  But she was too hurried to enquire into the cause of it.  She hardly waited to hear her promise not to tell Esther but fairly pushed her from the room.  Then, secure behind her locked door, she wiped the perspiration from her forehead and sank exhausted into the nearest chair.

When her strength came back her first care was to hide the remaining tablets in a safe place in her travelling bag, she never intended to use them again, never!  But it would do no harm to feel that she could trust herself to leave them alone, as of course she could.  Then she loosened her hair, not pausing to brush it, and, slipping off her dress, wrapped herself in a certain flowered dressing gown.  Not one of the dainty new ones, but a gown whose lace was yellowed and torn, a gown which felt like an old friend but which, after to-night, she would wear no more—­