The secretary smiled discreetly.

“I can understand now Mrs. Kettering’s anxiety over the telephone,” he murmured.

But Van Aldin shook his head. The hard look returned to his face.

“You are wrong there,” he said. “She doesn’t know about these; they are my little surprise for her.”

He shut the case, and began slowly to wrap it up again.

“It’s a hard thing, Knighton,” he said, “how little one can do for those one loves. I can buy a good portion of the earth for Ruth, if it would be any use to her, but it isn’t. I can hang these things round her neck and give her a moment or two’s pleasure, maybe, but⁠—”

He shook his head.

“When a woman is not happy in her home⁠—”