19]

"Giles promised me a ring over and over again," she said, her eyes fixed on Anne. "We have been engaged for over six months. He asked me just before you came, although it was always an understood thing. His father and mine arranged the engagement, you know. I didn't like the idea at first, as I wanted to make my own choice. Every girl should, I think. Don't you?"

"Certainly," Anne forced herself to say, "but you love Mr. Ware."

Daisy nodded. "Very, very much," she assented emphatically. "I must have loved him without knowing it, but I was only certain when he asked me to marry him. How lucky it is he has to make me his wife!" she sighed. "If he were not bound——" Here she stopped suddenly, and looked into the other woman's eyes.

"What nonsense!" said Anne good-humoredly, and more composed than ever. "Mr. Ware loves you dearly. You are the one woman he would choose for his wife. There is no compulsion about his choice, my dear."

"Do you really think so?" demanded the girl feverishly. "I thought—it was the ring, you know."

"What do you mean, Daisy?"

"He never would give me the ring, although I said it was ridiculous for a girl to be engaged without one. He always made some excuse, and only to-night—— But I have him safe now," she added, with a fierce abruptness, "and I'll keep him."

"Nobody wants to take him from you, dear."

"Do you really think so?" said Miss Kent again. "Then why did he delay giving me the ring?"

Anne knew well enough. After her first three meetings with Giles she had seen the love light in his eyes, and[Pg 20] his reluctance to bind himself irrevocably with the ring was due to a hope that something might happen to permit his choosing for himself. But nothing had happened, the age of miracles being past, and the vow to his dead father bound him. Therefore on this very night he had locked his shackles and had thrown away the key. Anne had made it plain to him that she could not, nor would she, help him to play a dishonorable part. He had accepted his destiny, and now Daisy asked why he had not accepted it before. Anne made a feeble excuse, the best she could think of.

[Pg 20]

"Perhaps he did not see a ring pretty enough," she said.

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