"Wouldn't you be proud," she said, "to have been brought up to think that you had no heart, and then to find that, in spite of everything, you had one that could jump and thump, and love and long, and make poverty look like paradise?" "I know what you mean, a little," he said. "Your mother tried to make you into an Article; my mother tried to make an Englishman of me. And instead, you turned into an angel, and I was never anything but a spread eagle." "Do you know," she said, "I can't help feeling a little sorry for poor mamma." "Then," said he, "put your left hand behind your back." She felt him slide a heavy ring upon her engagement finger. "Show her that, and tell her that it isn't glass." Eve couldn't keep from just one covert glance at her ring. The sight of it almost took her breath away. Dinner was announced. "I am frightened," she said; "have I given myself to a djinn?" "My Eve doesn't know whom she's given herself to," he whispered. "I don't believe I do," she said. "You don't," said he. An immense pride in his father's wealth and his own suddenly surged in Fitz. He could give her all those things that she had renounced for his sake, and more, too. But he did not tell her at that time. The great ruby on the slim hand flashed its message about the festive board. Some of the best-bred ladies in the land threatened to become pop-eyed from looking at it. Mrs. Blackwell, mother of the twins, whispered to Montgomery Stairs: "That Holden boy seems to have more to him than I had fancied." But young Tombs whispered to Dolly Blackwell, to whom he had just become engaged for the third (and last) time in five years: "She isn't thinking about the ring.... Look at her.... She's listening to music." * * * * * Montgomery Stairs (who is not altogether reliable) claims to have seen Mrs. Burton within five minutes of her learning who her son-in-law-to-be really was. For, of course, this came out presently and made a profound sensation. He claims to have seen--from a convenient eyrie--Mrs. Burton rush out into the little garden behind her cottage; he claims that all of a sudden she leaped into the air and turned a double somersault, and that immediately after she ran up and down the paths on her hands; that then she stood upon her head for nearly five minutes; and that finally she flung herself down and rolled over and over in a bed of heliotrope. But then, as is well known, Montgomery Stairs, in the good American phrase, was one of those who "also ran." Darius O'Connell sent a cable to Eve from Paris (from Maxim's, I am afraid, late at night). He said: "Heartiest congratulations and best wishes. You can fool some of the best people some of the time, but, thank God, you can't fool all of the best people all of the time." Eve and Fitz never knew just what he meant.