"Mother will be back by ten," she said.
"Why shouldn't she know at once? I don't like this hole-and-corner business, Rosanne. It is not good enough for you." He kissed her on the lips, and added, "Or me."
Her face was in shadow, but his was not, and she could see that fires were lighted in the stone-grey eyes that banished all its masklike impassivity and brought a wonderful beauty into it. She stood trembling to his kiss and his voice and the magic of her love for him. Almost it seemed as if she must do as he wished. But she knew she must not. If her mother once knew, everyone would have to know, and how brutal that would be to him when she had to tell him that it must all come to an end, that she could not and would not marry him!
"You must let me tell her tonight," he was saying, with quiet firmness.
"No, no!" she faltered.
"Yes. And there is another thing; give me your left hand, Rosanne."
She did not give it so much as that he drew it from behind her. It was tightly clenched. Holding it in his own, he drew her to a chair at last. She seemed to have no more strength to resist. Then, sitting down before her, he gently unclenched one finger after another until what she had hidden there lay sparkling in the night. Almost as if it had been something evil, he shook it from her palm into her lap, and taking her hand to his lips, kissed it, then placed upon the third finger a ring.
"You must only like the jewels I give you, Rosanne," he said, with unveiled meaning.
They sat there for a long, aching, exquisitely silent moment, her hand in his, the great square emerald set in a wonderful filigree and scrolling of gold on her finger, the other thing gleaming with a baleful light between them. Then the spell broke with the roll of carriage wheels on the drive. A minute later, Mrs. Ozanne came into the veranda, Rosalie clinging to her arm. Harlenden was on his feet instantly, and, before Rosanne could intervene, had proffered his request to speak to her mother. The latter looked as much dazed by his words as his presence.
"Not tonight, Sir Denis, please."