“You’re free,” said she, and her manner so piqued him, that to nerve himself to persist he had to think hard on the magnificence of Windrift and the many Howland millions and the rumored Ranger will.  She, in a series of jerks and pauses, took off the ring; with an expression and a gesture that gave no further hint of how she had valued it, both for its own beauty and for what it represented, she handed it to him.  “If that’s all,” she went on, “I’ll go back to father.”  To perfect her pretense, she should have risen, shaken hands cheerfully with him, and sent him carelessly away.  She knew it; but she could not.

He was not the man to fail to note that she made no move to rise, or to fail to read the slightly strained expression in her eyes and about the corners of her mouth.  That betrayal lost Adelaide a triumph; for, seeing her again, feeling her beauty and her charm in all his senses, reminded of her superiority in brains and in taste to the women from whom he might choose, he was making a losing fight for the worldly wise course.  “Anyhow, I must tame her a bit,” he reflected, now that he was sure she would be his, should he find on further consideration that he wanted her rather than Theresa’s fortune.  He accordingly took his hat, drew himself up, bowed coldly.

“Good morning,” he said.  And he was off, down the drive—­to the lower end where the stableboy was guarding his trap—­he was seated—­he was driving away—­he was gone—­gone!

She did not move until he was no longer in sight.  Then she rushed into the house, darted up to her room, locked herself in and gave way.  It was the first serious quarrel she had ever had with him; it was so little like a quarrel, so ominously like a—­No; absurd!  It could not be a finality.  She rejected that instantly, so confident had beauty and position as a prospective heiress made her as to her powers over any man she chose to try to fascinate, so secure was she in the belief that Ross loved her and would not give her up in any circumstances.  She went over their interview, recalled his every sentence and look—­this with surprising coolness for a young woman as deeply in love as she fancied herself.  And her anger rose against him—­a curious kind of anger, to spring and flourish in a loving heart.  “He has been flattered by Theresa until he has entirely lost his point of view,” she decided.  “I’ll give him a lesson when he comes trying to make it up.”

* * * * *

He drove the part of his homeward way that was through streets with his wonted attention to “smartness.”  True “man of the world,” he never for many consecutive minutes had himself out of his mind—­how he was conducting himself, what people thought of him, what impression he had made or was making or was about to make.  He estimated everybody and everything instinctively and solely from the standpoint of advantage to himself.  Such people, if they have the intelligence to hide themselves under a pleasing