‘It is yours.’

’No, sir; it is not mine, nor will it ever be mine.  But I wish you to understand that you have offended me.’

This made him so unhappy for the time that he almost told the story to Miss Boncassen.  ‘If I were to give you a ring,’ he said, ‘would not you accept it?’

‘What a question!’

’What I mean is, don’t you think all those conventional rules about men and women are absurd?’

’As a progressive American, of course I am bound to think all conventional rules are an abomination.’

‘If you had a brother and I gave him a stick he’d take it.’

‘Not across his back, I hope.’

‘Or if I gave your father a book?’

‘He’d take books to any extent, I should say.’

‘And why not you a ring?’

‘Who said I wouldn’t?  But after all this you mustn’t try me.’

‘I was not thinking of it.’

’I’m so glad of that!  Well;—­if you’ll promise me that you’ll never offer me one, I’ll promise that I’ll take it when it comes.  But what does all this mean?’

‘It is not worth talking about.’

’You have offered someone somebody a ring, and somebody hasn’t taken it.  May I guess?’

‘I had rather you did not.’

‘I could, you know.’

’Never mind about that.  Now come and have a turn.  I am bound not to give you a ring; but you are bound to accept anything else I may offer.’

’No, Lord Silverbridge;—­not at all.  Nevertheless we’ll have a turn.’

That night before he went up to his room he had told Isabel Boncassen that he loved her.  And when he spoke he was telling her the truth.  It had seemed to him that Mabel had become hard to him, and had over and over again rejected the approaches to tenderness which he had attempted to make in his intercourse with her.  Even though she were to accept him, what would that be worth to him if she did not love him?  So many things had been added together!  Why had Tregear gone to Grex, and having gone there why had he kept his journey a secret?  Tregear he knew was engaged to his sister;—­ but for all that, there was a closer intimacy between Mabel and Tregear than between Mabel and himself.  And surely she might have taken his ring!

And then Isabel Boncassen was so perfect!  Since he had first met her he had heard her loveliness talked of on all sides.  It seemed to be admitted that so beautiful a creature had never before been seen in London.  There is even a certain dignity attached to that which is praised by all lips.  Miss Boncassen as an American girl, had she been judged to be beautiful only by his own eyes,—­might perhaps have seemed to him to be beneath his serious notice.  In such a case he might have felt himself unable to justify so extraordinary a choice.  But there was an acclamation of assent as to this girl!  Then came the dancing,—­the one dance after another; the pressure of the hand, the entreaty that she would not, just on this occasion, dance with any other man, the attendance on her when she took her glass of wine, the whispered encouragement of Mrs Montacute Jones, the half-resisting and yet half-yielding conduct of the girl.  ‘I shall not dance at all again,’ she said when he asked to stand up for another.  ’Think of all the lawn-tennis this morning.’