"Oh! not for me!" says Monica, recoiling, and clasping her hands behind her back, yet with her eyes firmly fastened upon the beautiful ring. "Why not for you? Some day I shall give you all I possess; now I can give you only such things as this." "Indeed I must not take it," says Monica; but even as she utters the half-hearted refusal she creeps unconsciously closer to him, and, laying her hand upon his wrist, looks with childish delight and longing at the glittering stones lying in his palm. "But I say you must," says Desmond, taking a very superior tone. "It is yours, not mine. I have nothing to do with it. It was never meant for me. See," taking up her hand and slipping the ring on her engaged finger, "how pretty your little white hand makes it look!" It is always a difficult thing to a woman to bring herself to refuse diamonds, but doubly difficult once she has seen them positively adorning her own person. Monica looks at the ring, then sighs, then turns it round and round mechanically, and finally glances at Desmond. He returns the glance by passing his arm round her shoulders, after which there is never another word said about the ownership of the ring. "But it will put my poor little pigs in the shade, won't it?" says Monica, looking at her other hand, and then at him archly. "Oh! it is lovely--_lovely_!" "I think I might have chosen you a prettier one, had I run up to Dublin and gone to Waterhouse myself," says Desmond; "but I knew if I went I could not possibly get back until to-morrow evening, and that would mean losing two whole days of our precious seven." This speech pleases Monica, I think, even more than the ring. "I am glad you did not go," she says, softly. "So am I--especially as----" Here he pauses, and then goes on again hurriedly. "If I had gone, Monica, you would not have forgotten me?" "How could I forget you in two little days?" "They would have been two very big days to me. But tell me, if I were to go away from you for a far longer time--say for a whole month--would you still be faithful? Should I find you as I left you,--indifferent to others at least, if not wholly mine?" "Why should I change?" "Darling, there are so many reasons." He draws his breath quickly, impatiently. "Some day, you may meet some one else--more suited to you, perhaps, and----" "I shall never do that." She interrupts him slowly, but decidedly. "You are sure?" "Yes." The answer in words perhaps is meagre; but he, looking into the depths of her soft eyes, sees a surer answer there, and is satisfied. The shadows are growing longer and slower. They do not dance and quiver now in mad glee, as they did an hour agone. "I think we must go back," says Monica, with unconcealed regret. "What! you will throw me again into temptation? into the very arms of the fair Bella?" says Desmond, laughing. "Reflect, I beg of you, before it is too late."