Out of which, she said presently, laughing and whisking her hand behind her back:-- "You were looking at my ring!" "Why not?" said Mr. Garrott, starting a little. "A cat may look at a ring." That was reasonable surely. Angela, after a few teasing pretenses, held up her modest gimcrack for him to see. And Charles, naturally, accepted the hand so presented. As to what subsequently occurred, there was always a divided house within the many-sided Charles. But all his sides insisted that, at this point, he had no interest in the matter whatever; some held that he had not even seen the ring till she called attention to it. Now, bending over the hand, he examined it, and said:-- "Well! This is news to me, you know!" "Not at all!" laughed the owner of the ring. "Why, what do you mean?" "I've seen an engagement ring once before, you see." "You're very clever! But--does it have to follow that I'm engaged?" "That was the rule, in my day." "You don't seem at all curious!" "I'm very curious." "Well, I'm not, of course!" "I'm glad to hear it." He made, as it were, a sort of sketch of a move to release the small hand at this point. However, nothing seemed to come of it. "Are you?... Why?" "Oh, because--it's rather sad for an old bystander like me to see all the nice young people going off two by two, for happiness and the great adventure." To that, the girl made no reply. She merely gave a little laugh, and withdrew her hand. The house seemed very still. And Charles was at once aware that he had been found somehow deficient at the simple game of parlor conversation. In a scarcely definable way, he felt himself rebuked for timidity, wariness. Nevertheless, in her simple, natural way, the girl made known that the ring was properly the possession of a man in Mitchellton--Charles recalled Mr. Jenney--and was now worn only by courtesy, reminiscently, as it were, with no obligations attached. "You see, his brothers all went off, like all the other men, and his sister married and went away, and so he said he would stay in Mitchellton with his mother. And it's truly the most hopeless place! He doesn't seem to have any ambition at all--it provoked me so! I think all men ought to have ambition, don't you?" "I do, indeed. And he owns that pretty ring, you say?" "Yes. You see," she said, laughing and coloring, "when I felt I must break it off,--well, he wouldn't let it stay off exactly! I--I'm telling you all my secrets! He said he'd still consider himself--oh--you know!" "Naturally. He had enough ambition for that." And, as if to show Miss Angela that, in point of fact, none knew better than he how to talk to a girl on a sofa, Charles carelessly took up that betrothal hand again, saying: "So he made you keep the ring all the same?" "The day we left Mitchellton. And I said I'd wear it--oh, just till I met somebody I liked better! It was really more of a joke!..." "Ah! And you haven't met such a person yet, I gather?"