The Orange-Yellow Diamond. Fletcher Joseph Smith

it, of course? Just so. Now, do you know where that tray was when you went out, leaving your grandfather alone, yesterday afternoon?"

      "Yes," replied Zillah, unhesitatingly. "On the table in the back-parlour—where I saw it when I came in. My grandfather had taken it out of the front window, so that he could polish the rings."

      "Do you know how many rings it contained?"

      "No. Perhaps twenty-five or thirty."

      "They are, I see, laid loosely in the tray, which is velvet-lined. They were always left like that? Just so. And you don't know how many there were—nor how many there should be there, now? As a matter of fact, there are twenty-seven rings there—you can't say that is the right number?"

      "No," answered Zillah, "and my grandfather couldn't have said, either. A ring might be dropped into that tray—or a ring taken out. They are all old rings."

      "But—valuable?" suggested Mr. Parminter.

      "Some—yes. Others are not very valuable."

      "Now what do you mean by that word valuable? What, for instance, is the value of the least valuable ring there, and what is that of the most valuable?"

      Zillah glanced almost indifferently at the tray before her.

      "Some of these rings are worth no more than five pounds," she replied. "Some—a few—are worth twenty to thirty pounds; one or two are worth more."

      "And—they are all old?"

      "They are all of old-fashioned workmanship," said Zillah. "Made a good many years ago, all of them. The diamonds, or pearls, are all right, of course."

      Mr. Parminter handed over the half-sheet of paper on which Lauriston's rings had been exhibited to the Coroner and the jurymen.

      "Look at those rings, if you please," he said quietly. "Are they of the same sort, the same class, of rings as those in the tray?"

      "Yes," admitted Zillah. "Something the same."

      "What is the value of those rings—separately?" enquired Mr. Parminter.

      "Please give us your professional opinion."

      Zillah bent over the two rings for a while, turning them about.

      "This is worth about thirty, and that about fifty pounds," she replied at last.