"He is mine if he is yours." "Oh, not necessarily!"
"Deb," said Claud, with an air of desperation, planting himself before her, "what are you going to do?"
She looked up at him with narrowing eyes and stiffening lips.
"What IS there to do?" she returned. "Are you going to put up with this—this outrage—to condone everything—to tolerate that fellow at Redford, taking the position of a son of the house, or are you going to show them both that they have forfeited their right ever to set foot upon the place again?"
"My sister too, you mean?"
"Certainly—if you can still bring yourself to call her your sister. She belongs to him now, not to us. She has voluntarily cut herself off from her world. Let her go. Deb, if you love me—"
He paused, and Deb smiled into his handsome but disgusted face.
"Ah, is that to be a test of love?" she asked. "I understand. I am to choose between you. Well"—she rose, towering, drawing the big diamond from her engagement finger—"I am going to her now. I ought to have been there hours ago, but waited back to receive you. Good-bye! And pray, don't come again to this contaminated house. We have too horribly gone down in the world. I know it, and I would not have you compromised on any account. We Pennycuicks, we don't abandon our belongings, especially when they may be dying; we sink or swim together." She held the jewel out to him.
"What rot!" he blurted vulgarly, flushing with anger that was not unmixed with shame. "Why will you wilfully misunderstand me? Put it on, Deb—put it on, and don't be so childish."
"I will not put it on," said she, "until you apologise for the things you have been saying to me, and the manner of your saying them."