Harry Clifford was a fast young man, but pleasant to talk with for a while and Ethelyn found him very agreeable, saving that his mention of Frank made her heart throb unpleasantly; for she fancied he might know something of that page of her past life which she had concealed from Richard.

Nor were her fears without foundation, for once when they were standing together near her husband, Harry said: "It seems so strange that you are the Ethie about whom Frank used to talk so much, and a lock of whose hair he kept so sacred.

I remember I tried to buy a part of it from him, but could not succeed until once, when his funds from home failed to come, and he was so hard up, as we used to say, that he actually sold, or rather pawned, half of the shining tress for the sum of five dollars.

As the pawn was never redeemed, I have the hair now, but never expected to meet with its fair owner, who needs not to be told that the tress is tenfold more valuable since I have met her, and know her to be the wife of our esteemed Member," and young Clifford bowed toward Richard, whose face wore a perplexed, dissatisfied expression.
He did not fancy Harry Clifford much, and he certainly did not care to hear that he had in his possession a lock of Ethelyn's hair, while the allusions to Frank Van Buren were anything but agreeable to him.

Neither did he like Ethelyn's painful blushes, and her evident desire for Harry to stop.