real. At least," she went on explaining herself to Harry's smile, "it seems as if this must be going on a long way off, as if it couldn't be so close to us, as if the ring I wanted so much couldn't really be the one that has disappeared." All the while she felt Harry's smile enveloping her with an odd, half-protecting watchfulness, but at the close of her sentence he frowned a little.
"Well, perhaps we can find another ring to take the place of it."
She felt that she had been stupid where she should have been most delicate. "But you don't understand," she protested, leaning far toward him as if to coerce him with her generous warmth. "The Chatworth ring was nothing but a fancy I had. I never thought of it for a moment as an engagement ring!"
By the light stir of silk she was aware that Clara had risen. She looked up quickly to encounter that odd look. Clara's face was so smooth, so polished, so unruffled, as to appear almost blank, but none the less Flora saw it all in Clara's eye--a look that was not new to her. It was the same with which Clara had met the announcement of her engagement; the same look with which she had confronted every allusion to the approaching marriage; the same with which she now surveyed the mention of the engagement ring--a look neither approving nor dissenting, whose calm, considerate speculation seemed to repudiate all interest positive or negative in the approaching event except the one large question, "What is to become of me?" Many times Clara had held it up before her, not as a question, certainly not as an accusation; as a flat assertion of fact; but to-night Flora felt it so directly and imperatively aimed at her that it seemed this time to demand an audible response. And Clara's way of getting up, and standing there, with her gloves on, poised and expectant, as if she were only waiting for an opportunity to take farewell, took on, in the light of her look, the fantastic appearance of a final departure. "I'm afraid," she mildly reminded them, "that Shima announced the carriage ten minutes ago."
"Oh, dear, I'm so sorry!" Flora's eyes wavered apologetically in the direction of the waiting Japanese. Clara's flicker of amusement made her hate herself the moment it was out. She could always depend on herself when she knew she was on exhibition. She could be sure of the right thing if it were only large enough, but she was still caught at odd moments by the trifles, the web of a certain social habit into which she had slipped, full-grown on the smooth surface of her father's millions. Clara's fleeting smile lit up these trifles to her now as enormous. It took advantage of her small deficit to point out to her more plainly than ever to what large blunders she might be liable when she had cut loose from Clara's guiding, 

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