Tita lifts her eyes and looks at him.  Their glances meet, and there is something in his that brings the blood to her face.

“I cannot understand you,” cries she, with some agitation.  “You don’t want my money now; you have plenty of your own, and,” throwing up her head with a disdainful little gesture, “certainly you don’t want me."

“You seem wonderfully certain on many points,” says Rylton, “but is your judgment always infallible?”

“In this case, yes.”

“Ah! you have decided,” says he.  His gaze wanders from her face and falls upon her hands.  On the right hand is a beautiful pearl ring.  He regards it without thought for a second or two, and then he wakens to the fact that he had never seen it there before.  “Who gave you that ring?” demands he suddenly, with something of the old masterful air.  It is so like the old air that Tita for a little while is silent, then she wakes.  No!  It is all over now—­that ownership.  She has emancipated herself; she is free.  There is something strange and terrible, however, to her in the knowledge that this thought gives her no joy.  She stands pale, actually frightened, for there is fear in the knowledge—­that she had felt a sharp throb of delight when that commanding tone had fallen on her ears.

She recovers almost instantly.

“You think it was Tom, perhaps,” says she, speaking with a little difficulty, but smiling contemptuously.  “Well, it was not.  It was only Margaret, after all.  This is a last insult, I suppose.  Was it to deliver it that you came here to-day?”

“No,” he is beginning, “but——­”

_ “You_ ask me questions,” continues she, brushing his words aside with a wave of her small hand.  “And I—­I—­have I no questions to ask?” She stops, as if suffocating.

“You have, God knows,” says he.  “And”—­he hesitates—­“I don’t expect you to believe me, but—­that old folly—­it is dead.”

“Dead?” She shakes her head.  “What killed it?”

"You!" says Rylton.

One burning glance she casts at him.

“Do not let us waste time,” says she.  “Tell me plainly why you came here, why you want to see me.”

“You give me little encouragement to speak”—­bitterly.  “But it is this:  I want you to come back to me, to be mistress of my house again.  I”—­he pauses as if seeking words—­“I have bought a new house; I want you to come and be the head of it.”

Tita has been listening to him with wide eyes.  She had grown pale as death itself during his speech, and now she recoils from him.  She makes a little movement as though to repel him for ever, and then, suddenly she covers her eyes with her hands, and bursts into violent weeping.

“Oh no!  No!” gasps she.  “Never!  Never again!  How could you ask me!”

He takes a step towards her, and lays his hand upon her arm.

“No, don’t touch me.  Don’t speak to me,” cries she.  “I have had to see you to-day, and it has been terrible to me—­so terrible that I hope I shall never see you again.  I could not bear it.  Go—­go away!”