Alice’s gloves were ruined, and she stood holding my water-proof around her with the bare hand on which the gem was shining. But Godfrey did not see it until he helped her into the carriage, when the stone pressed hard against his hand, making him start as if he had been stung, or, rather, as if that ring on Alice’s finger had riveted anew the fetters he had been so glad to break. How came she by it, and what did it mean? Surely not that he was hers again. A thousand times no, when he remembered the mighty love for another surging through his veins and making him so wildly happy. He was honorably free. Alice had made him so herself, and even his father could not gainsay that or think the Schuyler reputation for honor compromised in the least. A man could not marry a woman who would not marry him, who had told him so with angry words and biting sarcasms. Godfrey was in high spirits, and his manner was not like that of one who has been so near to death. He could even joke with Robert and Emma, and would have rallied Alice on her forlorn and bedraggled appearance when she came to him on the shore, if he had not remembered the scene which had followed that coming, when the ring of betrothal was hurled at him so fiercely. How it flashed and shone upon her hand, which, it seemed to him, was continually thrust upon his sight, now on the table, now on the back of the chair, now on the mantel,—everywhere he turned his eyes there was the restless hand and the diamond sparkling on it, and seeming to say to him that his freedom was not so sure. At last, when he could bear the sight no longer, he sauntered away to his father’s present business-room, where he sat down alone to think of Gertie, and wonder if it would be greatly out of place for him to go and inquire for her that night instead of waiting till morning. And while he sat thinking there was a knock upon the door, and Alice came in with a grieved look in her face and tears in her eyes, as she said: “Have you nothing to say to me, Godfrey? You have scarcely spoken to me since the accident.” “What shall I say to you, Allie?” Godfrey asked, not unkindly; and then Alice’s tears fell in torrents as she burst out, impetuously: “Oh, Godfrey, say you do not mind what I said to you on the river-bank. I was angry, jealous, furious, because you put me away to save another, and kissed her before my eyes, and called her your darling. I think I must have been crazed to say what I did, and throw my engagement ring away. But I have it again. I took it from her hand and put it back on mine. See, it is here; look, Godfrey, and tell me it is just as it was with us.”