"Not if the person who asks me is in my good books. You try me."
"What shall I ask for?"
"Anything."
"Give me that ring off your finger," she said. He at once took it off his hand. "Of course you know I am in joke. You don't imagine that I would take it from you?" He still held it towards her. "Lord Silverbridge, I expect that with you I may say a foolish word without being brought to sorrow by it. I know that that ring belonged to your great-uncle,—and to fifty Pallisers before."
"What would it matter?"
"And it would be wholly useless to me, as I could not wear it."
"Of course it would be too big," said he, replacing the ring on his own finger. "But when I talk of any one being in my good books, I don't mean a thing like that. Don't you know there is nobody on earth I—" there he paused and blushed, and she sat motionless, looking at him expecting, with her colour too somewhat raised,—"whom I like so well as I do you?" It was a lame conclusion. She felt it to be lame. But as regarded him, the lameness at the moment had come from a timidity which forbade him to say the word "love" even though he had meant to say it.
She recovered herself instantly. "I do believe it," she said. "I do think that we are real friends."
"Would you not take a ring from a—real friend?"
"Not that ring;—nor a ring at all after I had asked for it in joke. You understand it all. But to go back to what we were talking about,—if you can do anything for Frank, pray do. You know it will break her heart. A man of course bears it better, but he does not perhaps suffer the less. It is all his life to him. He can do nothing while this is going on. Are you not true enough to your friendship to exert yourself for him?" Silverbridge put his hand up and rubbed his head as though he were vexed. "Your aid would turn everything in his favour."