"Oh, horrid!" said he. "I love to see you with plenty of rings, but as to bracelets--I can't endure them." "Never?" said Regina. "Never?" "No, I never buy a bracelet for anybody. I like to give you something that you can wear for weeks or years together. Bracelets always seem in the way, they don't set off a pretty wrist, and they draw attention to an ugly one. Besides, they are intensely disagreeable if you happen to put your arm around my neck. Come, let us go inside and see how the sapphire suits your hand." He led the way into the shop, as a man always does when he is going to buy something for a woman. Have you ever noticed, my reader, how the most polite of men, who stands aside on all occasions for the lady to precede him, marches into a shop right in front of her when he is going to make her a present? Now, Alfred Whittaker's knowledge of French was what may be described as infinitesimal, and it being his habit to state his business whenever he entered a shop of any kind, he did not wait for Regina's faulty but more understandable explanations. "_Vous-avez un ring la_," pointing with a sturdy British thumb toward the window, "_sappheer_." "_Ah, ah, une broche, monsieur?_" "Regina, what does she mean by that?" Now, for the life of her Regina could not think of the French word for ring. "She means 'brooch' of course," she replied. "I really don't know what ring is in French." "_Pas une broche?_" the lady of the establishment demanded. "No, not a brooch," Alfred Whittaker shouted at her, as if her understanding lay at the back of deaf ears. "_Un bracelet, peut-etre?_" the Frenchwoman asked, touching her wrist with a gesture that conveyed more than her words. "No, no," said Alfred, tapping his first finger. "_Ah, ah, une bague._" She quickly opened the window and brought out several sapphire rings, including the one which had taken Alfred's fancy, and then, as he had already, being a business man, grasped the initial weakness of the Norman character, there began a period of haggling which Alfred Whittaker would never have thought of employing in the case of the establishment of Templeton. Eventually Regina left the shop with the beautiful sapphire ring upon her finger. "My dear girl," said Alfred (he always called her his dear girl when he was best pleased), "eighteen pounds for a ring like that is dirt cheap She said it was an occasion, what did she mean by 'an occasion'?" "I haven't the least idea, but she certainly said it." "However, no matter what she may have meant, the ring is given away at the price--it's worth thirty pounds if it's worth a penny. You found it, so to speak, for I won the money that paid for it." "Not quite all." "No, not quite all, but the other was a mere bagatelle. I like to see you with plenty of rings; some women have not the hands to show them off."