"You know we are related," Juno said, holding Helen's hand a long time at parting, ostensibly to show how very friendly she felt, but really to examine and calculate the probable value of the superb diamond which shone on Helen's finger, Mark's first gift, left for her with his mother, who had presented it for him.
"As diamonds are now, that never cost less than four or five hundred dollars," Juno said, as she was discussing the matter with Bell, and telling her that Helen had the ring they had admired so much at Tiffany's the last time they were there, and then her spiteful, envious nature found vent in the remark: "I wonder at Mark's taste when only shoddy buy diamonds now."
"Why, then, did you torment father into buying that little pin for you the other day?" Bell asked, and Juno replied: "I have always been accustomed to diamonds and that is a very different thing from Helen Lennox putting them on. Did you notice how red and fat her fingers were, and rough, too? Positively her hand felt like a nutmeg grater."
"You know the fable of the fox and the grapes," Bell said, her gray eyes flashing indignantly upon her sister, who, wisely forbore further remarks upon Helen's hands and contented herself with wondering if people generally would take up Mrs. Ray and honor her as they once did Katy.
"Of course they will," she said. "It's like heaps of them to do it," and in this conclusion she was not wrong, for those who had liked Helen Lennox did not find her less desirable now that she was Helen Ray, and numberless were the attentions bestowed upon her and the invitations she received.
But with few exceptions Helen declined the latter, feeling that, circumstanced as she was, with her husband in so much danger, it was better not to mingle much in gay society. She was very happy with Mrs. Banker, who petted and caressed and loved her almost as much as if she had been an own daughter. Mark's letters, too, which came nearly every day, were bright sun spots in her existence, so full were they of tender love and kind thoughtfulness for her. He was very happy, he wrote, in knowing that at home there was a dear little brown-haired wife, waiting and praying for him, and but for the separation from her was well content now with a soldier's life. Once when he was stationed for a longer time than usual at some point Helen thought seriously of going to him for a week or more, but the project was prevented by the sudden arrival in New York of Katy, who came one night to Mrs. Banker's, her face as white as ashes, and a strange, wild expression in her eyes as she said to Helen: "I am going to Wilford. He is dying. He has sent for me. I ought to go on to-night, but cannot, my head aches so," and pressing both her hands upon her head Katy sank fainting into Helen's arms.