A glance from her stopped him. "Oh!" she exclaimed, with a dangerous smile. "You are out of humor this morning and are seeking a quarrel."
"That would be impossible," he retorted. "I never quarrel. Evidently you have forgotten all about me."
Her pride would not let her refuse the challenge, convert in his words, frank in his eyes.
"Possibly," mocked she, forcing herself to look amusedly at him. "I don't bother much about people I don't see."
"You take a light view of our engagement," was his instant move.
"I should take a still lighter view," retorted she, "if I thought the way you're acting was a fair specimen of your real self."
This from Adelaide, who had always theretofore shared in his almost reverent respect for himself. Adelaide judging him, criticising him! All Ross's male instinct for unquestioning approval from the female was astir. "You wish to break our engagement?" he inquired, with a glance of cold anger that stiffened her pride and suppressed her impulse to try to gain time.
"You're free," said she, and her manner so piqued him, that to nerve himself to persist he had to think hard on the magnificence of Windrift and the many Howland millions and the rumored Ranger will. She, in a series of jerks and pauses, took off the ring; with an expression and a gesture that gave no further hint of how she had valued it, both for its own beauty and for what it represented, she handed it to him. "If that's all," she went on, "I'll go back to father." To perfect her pretense, she should have risen, shaken hands cheerfully with him, and sent him carelessly away. She knew it; but she could not.
He was not the man to fail to note that she made no move to rise, or to fail to read the slightly strained expression in her eyes and about the corners of her mouth. That betrayal lost Adelaide a triumph; for, seeing her again, feeling her beauty and her charm in all his senses, reminded of her superiority in brains and in taste to the women from whom he might choose, he was making a losing fight for the worldly wise course. "Anyhow, I must tame her a bit," he reflected, now that he was sure she would be his, should he find on further consideration that he wanted her rather than Theresa's fortune. He accordingly took his hat, drew himself up, bowed coldly.
"Good morning," he said. And he was off, down the drive—to the lower end where the stableboy was guarding his trap—he was seated—he was driving away—he was gone—gone!