When they looked each at the other both smiled—her foreboding had retreated to the background. She began to turn the ring round and round upon her finger.
"Mrs. John Dumont," she said. "Doesn't it sound queer?" And she gazed dreamily away toward the ranges of hills between which the river danced and sparkled as it journeyed westward. When she again became conscious of her immediate surroundings—other than Dumont—she saw a deck-hand looking at her with a friendly grin.
Instantly she covered the ring with her hand and handkerchief. "But I mustn't wear it," she said to Dumont.
"No—not on your finger." He laughed and drew from his pocket a slender gold chain. "But you might wear it on this, round your neck. It'll help to remind you that you don't belong to yourself any more, but to me."
She took the chain—she was coloring in a most becoming way—and hid it and the ring in her bosom. Then she drew off a narrow hoop of gold with a small setting and pushed it on his big little finger.
"And THAT, sir," she said, with a bewitching look, "may help you not to forget that YOU belong to me."
She left the ferry in advance of him and faced Olivia just in time for them to go down together to the half-past twelve o'clock dinner.