'All I have is yours. Why shouldn't you take this? It's a horse-shoe, isn't it? You know that is for luck.'
He pressed the spring, and looked at the pearls.
'No; they are too superb to be given or accepted in a careless way. You must take them back, please: I did not even show them to anyone.'
'Take them back!' repeated Ritchie, his face flushing with vexation. 'What should I do with the damned thing?'
'Is it right for you to say that before me?'
'No; and I beg your pardon. But you should not vex me so much. You must keep them. Now, I've got to see my trainer at one o'clock, and after that to take a spin down to St. Kilda. But I want you to promise to come out for a ride with me to-morrow morning. I have the neatest, best-bred little colt for you that ever you saw. Now I can see you are trying to think of an excuse.'
'Indeed I am not. I shall be delighted to ride. The air here stifles one. I am only thinking how I shall be dragged to give an account of all these friendly rides and talks the next time the spirit moves you to have a "square understanding."'
'Well, you needn't think anything of the kind. You _have_ sometimes thought you could marry me. Why, Stella, I could live on that for a year. The last thing I do at night is to look at your picture. When I look at it to-night, I shall hardly be able to believe you said that. Now put both your hands in mine--I won't hurt them--and say, "God bless you, Ted," the same as you did in the Fairacre garden.'
She gave him her hands, and repeated the words with a little tremor in her voice, which thrilled him through and through with happiness. He held her hands very gently, and lifted them one after the other to his lips, and then he hurried away.
Stella threw herself into an arm-chair. For some moments she was buried in one of those profound meditations in which every faculty of her mind became absorbed in a tyrannous, compulsory looking-on at her own special span of the past as part of an unfathomable enigma. She was presently roused by Laurette's shrill voice.
So Ted had not even stayed to lunch? Oh, she made no complaint. She knew too well thai at certain times in a man's life sisters, in common with all the rest of the world, must take a back seat--look on like people in the pit of a theatre, who see as through a glass darkly, and see little.