“All I have to say is this.  Maurice Brandon is no fit escort for any woman who values her reputation.  And I here and now forbid you most strictly, most emphatically, ever to go out with him alone again.”

He paused.  She was looking straight back at him with her chin in the air.

“Dear me!” she said.  “Do you really?  And who gave you the right to dictate to me?”

“You yourself,” he answered quietly.

“Indeed!  May I ask when?”

He stiffened a little, but his face did not alter.

“When you promised to be my wife,” he said.

Her eyes blazed instant defiance.

“An engagement can be broken off!” she declared recklessly.

“By mutual consent,” said Caryl drily.

“That is absurd,” she rejoined.  “You couldn’t possibly hold me to it against my will.”

“I am quite capable of doing so,” he told her coolly, “if I think it worth my while.”

“Worth your while!” she exclaimed, staring at him as if she doubted his sanity.

“Even so,” he said.  “When I have fully satisfied myself that a heartless little flirt like you can be transformed into a virtuous and amiable wife.  It may prove a difficult process, I admit, and perhaps not altogether a pleasant one.  But I shall not shirk it on that account.”

He leant back against the mantelpiece with a gesture that plainly said that so far as he was concerned the matter was ended.

But it was not so with Doris.  She stood before him for several seconds absolutely motionless, all the vivid colour gone from her face, her blue eyes blazing with speechless fury.  At length, with a sudden, fierce movement, she tore the ring he had given her from her finger and held it out to him.

“Take it!” she said, her voice high-pitched and tremulous.  “This is the end!”

He did not stir a muscle.

“Not yet, I think,” he said.

She flashed a single glance at him in which pride and uncertainty were strangely mingled, then made a sudden swoop towards the fire.  He read her intention in a second, and stooping swiftly caught her hand.  The ring shot from her hold, gleamed in a shining curve in the firelight, and fell with a tinkle among the ashes of the fender.

Caryl did not utter a word, but his face was fixed and grim as, still tightly gripping the hand he had caught, he knelt and groped among the half-dead embers for the ring it had wantonly flung there.  When he found it he rose.

“Before you do anything of that sort again,” he said, “let me advise you to stop and think.  It will do you no harm, and may save trouble.”

He took her left hand, paused a moment, and then deliberately fitted the ring back upon her finger.  She made no resistance, for she was instinctively aware that he would brook no morefrom her just then.  She was in fact horribly scared, though his voice was still perfectly quiet and even.  Something in his touch had set her heart beating, something electric, something terrifying.  She dared not meet his eyes.