"Toi et Moi"

This is an engagement ring, as they were common in about 1850, this one coming from Great Britain.(The pearl symbolizes the woman, the diamond stands for the man.) It was given to my great grandmother, survived the war and the Russian occupation of Eastern Germany. It was given to my mother when my grandfather died in 1961 and my mother gave it to me for my high school graduation in 1966.
Then in 1996 one night it was stolen. A burglar broke into the house and took away all my jewelry. It was a particularly harsh loss, as several pieces were antique as this one and memories of past members of the family.
Then, about 4 months later, I spent a week in Strassbourg (France) with my students.
While visiting the Orangerie in a splendid park, where there is also a stork breeding station, great old trees and wonderful beds full of flowers and beautiful bushes, I noticed that there was a show of antique jewelry in the Orangerie. So, I paid the show a visit and about half way I discovered MY RING! Unbelievable. Of course , it was no option to go to the police... I had no proof that this was the one that had been stolen, but I still believe it. It was offered for the equivalent of nearly 6000 D Mark , which was exactly the amount that I had on my savings account at that moment. It all seemed to fit together like little pieces of a puzzle...
I ended up buying it, writing a cheque and then I was sitting outside in the sun on a bench , storks circling above my head and I felt as if someone had pulled away the carpet from under my feet. There I had a little box with a family heirloom and not a cent on the bank anymore...Of course I asked myself: Should I have done this? Could I have acted differently? Is a ring worth that much money?
But in the end, I never regretted it. I like to feel connected to those former generations, to a woman, that I never have seen in my life, but I have a little bit of her blood in my veins.
Read a bit about the way to photograph jewelry and it isn't easy. This ring here was put on the window sill which is painted white, but it mirrored obviously the blue sky. I did not change anything in this picture except for a little cropping.
On the pearl the green shine is the mirroring of our lawn , which I thought pretty surprising, and there is a bit of sky.
Flickr shows the same ring from a different perspective, different background and with flash, that I wasn't able to suppress, hence the too white dot on the pearl. I was amazed to discover how dirty this ring is in the macro...

Thank you all for the attentive and kind comments, heart and stars for the little crab spider yesterday!