A Bankrupt Heart, Volume III by Florence Marryat

Whilst Nora was walking thoughtfully back to the Hall, Nell was raging up and down the circumscribed limits of her bedroom, with her heart and brain in a tumult of suspicion and suspense. ‘The ring! the ring! ' was all she could say to herself. It _was_ the earl's ring, she was sure of that -- she had always seen it on his finger -- had so often drawn it off playfully, and placed it on her own. She recognised the very colour of the sapphires; they were so darkly blue, and yet clear as a summer sea; she remembered Lord Ilfracombe having told her the gems were flawless, and had been presented in another form by an Eastern potentate to some ancestor of his, who had been Governor-General of India. She would have sworn to them amongst a thousand! How then had this woman, this Mrs Lumley, got hold of them? Was she a friend of Ilfracombe's, and had he given them to her? Nell thought it unlikely. The earl had never been a _cavalier des dames_; besides, he was married now, and his family heirlooms belonged to his wife. At that her thoughts flew to Mr Portland. _He_ was at the bottom of the mystery perhaps. He had obtained the jewel from Lord Ilfracombe, either by an appeal to the latter's generosity, or by his odious habit of gambling, laid a bet with the earl about it, or won it as a stake. And then he must have given it to this lady -- this Mrs Lumley.

What was she to him then? Was their combined presence at the Hall by accident or design? Nell thirsted to learn the truth of it. She felt it a desecration to have seen _his_ ring on the hand of another person, and to have had it offered to herself in that careless fashion, as if it were of no intrinsic value. The ring that she had known for so long -- that had been clasped in her hand by day -- that she had lain with her head on by night. Poor Nell sobbed aloud in the agony of remembrance as she recalled the fact that she had no further part nor lot in it. It was something more than mere suspicion that was worrying her. We have a sixth sense, called intuition, which, as a rule, we pay too little attention to. The influences to which we have been subject, the experiences we have passed through, all leave a subtle something behind them, which is patent to the intuition of our acquaintances, as theirs is to us. We may not recognise it, but it guides, in a great measure, our feelings and ideas, our likes and dislikes. It was intuition that drew Lady Ilfracombe to Panty-cuckoo Farm, and made her conceive such an unusual interest in Nell Llewellyn. It was intuition that made Nell shrink from the friendly advances of the woman who had supplanted her in the affections of her lover, and burn to discover the reason that she was in possession of his ring.