‘Humph! A trifle like Lady Stuartville,’ replied His Majesty. ‘I should not wonder if it is the countess; but I’ll know. Perhaps you did not say to whom the house belonged, Mina?’
‘I said,’ replied Mina, smiling, ‘that the owner of the house was a great Angrian proprietor, a lineal descendant of the Western Pakenhams, and that I was his housekeeper.’
‘She would not believe you! Give me your hand, Mina. You are not so old as I am.’
‘Yes, my lord; I was born on the same day, an hour after Your Grace.’
‘So I have heard, but it must be a mistake; you don’t look twenty, and I am twenty-five. Look at me, Mina, straight, and don’t blush!’
Mina tried to look, but she could not do it without blushing. She coloured to the temples.
‘Pshaw!’ said His Grace, pushing: her away, ‘my acquaintance of ten years cannot meet my eye unshrinkingly! Have you lost that ring I once gave you, Mina?’
‘Which ring, my lord? You have given me many.’
‘That which I said had the essence of your whole heart and mind engraven in the stone as a motto.’
‘Fidelity?’ asked Miss Laury; and she held out her hand with a graven emerald on the forefinger.