"Why not take it?"
"Can't you understand? I wouldn't for the world. But you will be good enough,—won't you, to see that there is nothing else in it?"
"Nothing of love?"
"Nothing in the least. He and I are excellent friends. We are cousins, and intimate, and all that. I thought I might have had my joke, and now I am punished for it. As for love, don't you see he is over head and ears in love with Miss Boncassen?"
This was very imprudent on the part of Lady Mabel, who, had she been capable of clinging fast to her policy, would not now in a moment of strong feeling have done so much to raise obstacles in her own way. "But you will send for it, won't you, and have it put on his dressing-table to-night?" When he went to bed Lord Silverbridge found it on his table.
But before that time came he had twice danced with Miss Boncassen, Lady Mabel having refused to dance with him. "No," she said, "I am angry with you. You ought to have felt that it did not become you as a gentleman to subject me to inconvenience by throwing upon me the charge of that diamond. You may be foolish enough to be indifferent about its value, but as you have mixed me up with it I cannot afford to have it lost."
"It is yours."
"No, sir; it is not mine, nor will it ever be mine. But I wish you to understand that you have offended me."
This made him so unhappy for the time that he almost told the story to Miss Boncassen. "If I were to give you a ring," he said, "would not you accept it?"
"What a question!"