She was interrupted by a little exclamation of pleasure from Rose, who had just discovered a small white parcel at her plate.  She was untying it with eager fingers, while her colour came and went.  A card fluttered out, face upward.  “To my dear Rose, with love from Aunt Francesca,” was written in a small, quaint hand.

It was a single magnificent ruby set in a ring which exactly fitted.  Rose seldom wore rings and wondered, vaguely, how Aunt Francesca knew.

“I filled a finger of one of your gloves,” said Madame, as though she had read the thought, “and had it fitted.  Simple, wasn’t it?”

“Oh,” breathed Rose, “it’s beautiful beyond words!  How shall I ever thank you!”

“Wear it, dear.  I’m so glad you’re pleased!”

“It’s lovely,” said Isabel, but the tone was cold and she seemed to speak with an effort.  With a swift little stab at the heart, Rose saw that the girl envied her the gift.

“It reconciles me to my years,” Rose went on, quickly.  “I’m willing to be forty, if I can have a ring like this.”

“Why, Cousin Rose!” cried Isabel, in astonishment.  “Are you forty?”

“Yes, dear.  Don’t be conventional and tell me I don’t look it, for I feel it—­every year.”

“I should never have thought it,” Isabel murmured.

Rose turned the ring slowly upon her finger and the ruby yielded the deep crimson glow of its heart to the candlelight that softly filled the room.  “I’ve never had a ruby,” she said, “and yet I feel, someway, as though I’d always had this.  It seems as if it belonged to me.”

“That’s because it suits you,” nodded Madame Bernard.  “I hope that sometime our civilisation may reach such a point of advancement that every woman will wear the clothes and jewels that suit her personality, and make her home a proper setting for herself.  See how women break their hearts for diamonds—­and not one woman in a hundred can wear them.”

“Could I wear diamonds?” asked Isabel.  She was interested now and her eyes sparkled.

Madame Bernard studied her for a moment before replying.  “Yes,” she admitted, “you could wear them beautifully, but they do not belong to Rose, or to me.”

“What else could I wear?”

“Turquoises, if they were set in silver.”

“I have one,” Isabel announced with satisfaction.  “A lovely big turquoise matrix set in dull silver.  But I have no diamonds.”

“They’ll come,” Rose assured her, “if you want them.  I think people usually get things if they want them badly enough.”

Isabel turned to Madame Bernard.  “What stones do you wear?” she inquired, politely.

“Only amethysts,” she laughed.  “I have a pearl necklace, but it doesn’t quite ‘belong,’ so I don’t wear it.  I won’t wear anything that doesn’t ‘belong.’”

“How can you tell?”

“By instinct.”  “I can walk into a shop, look around for a moment, and say:  ‘please bring me my hat.’  The one I ask for is always the right one.  It is invariably becoming and suitable, and it’s the same with everything else.”