She did not speak when she had finished her inspection; with apparent indifference to his presence she took off her hat and coat. Unable, perhaps, to endure the situation any longer he struggled to obtain possession of his voice. It sounded harsh and husky. 'I thought you had gone to Brighton?' 'So you keep an observation on my movements, I see?' The words were accompanied by a smile which made him clench his fists so tightly that he drove the nails into the palms. She was folding up a veil, with a dainty show of peculiar care. 'I ought to be at Brighton; but I'm not. I meant to go; but I didn't. It was so late that I put off my journey till tomorrow; so I went to see some people instead. It was painfully slow; this promises to be better.' Her airy manner, which seemed to him to be so pregnant with contempt, tried him more than reproaches might have done, or rage. He was so conscious of his position that indifference stung more than lashes. A policeman he could have faced, but not this smiling girl. All his self-respect had gone clean out of him; he felt she knew, and floundered in his efforts to regain some part of it. 'Miss Bewicke, you know why I am here.' 'To see me, I suppose. So good of you, Guy. Especially as I take it that you intended to wait for me till I returned from Brighton.' 'I came to take my own.' 'Your own?' 'This.' He held out the ring between his finger and thumb. She came nearer, so that she might see what it was he held, smiling all the time. 'That--that's mine!' 'It was bequeathed me by my uncle.' 'Your uncle? Impossible; it wasn't his to bequeath.' 'You know the conditions which were attached to its possession. Since you declined to give it me--' 'I did not decline.' 'I don't know what other construction you put upon your conduct of last night. I gathered that you declined. Therefore, since its immediate possession was of capital importance, I came and took it.' 'How nice of you. And you waited till you thought I was at Brighton to show your mettle? How discreet! Guy, weren't you once to have been my husband?' Nothing was further from his desire than to become involved in a tangle of reminiscences, so he became a little brutal. 'I have the ruby; that is the main point.' 'Are you proud of having robbed me--the girl who was to have been your wife?' 'You would have robbed me.' 'Even supposing that to be true, does that entitle you to throw aside all those canons of honour to which you have always given me to understand you were such a stickler, and become--a thief? Oh, Guy!' 'I do not propose to bandy words with you. I know of old your capacity to make black seem white--you were ever an actress, May. How the ruby originally came into your possession I cannot say.' 'It's not a pretty story, Guy; scarcely to your uncle's credit.'