"You seem wonderfully certain on many points," says Rylton, "but is your judgment always infallible?"
"In this case, yes."
"Ah! you have decided," says he. His gaze wanders from her face and falls upon her hands. On the right hand is a beautiful pearl ring. He regards it without thought for a second or two, and then he wakens to the fact that he had never seen it there before. "Who gave you that ring?" demands he suddenly, with something of the old masterful air. It is so like the old air that Tita for a little while is silent, then she wakes. No! It is all over now—that ownership. She has emancipated herself; she is free. There is something strange and terrible, however, to her in the knowledge that this thought gives her no joy. She stands pale, actually frightened, for there is fear in the knowledge—that she had felt a sharp throb of delight when that commanding tone had fallen on her ears.
She recovers almost instantly.
"You think it was Tom, perhaps," says she, speaking with a little difficulty, but smiling contemptuously. "Well, it was not. It was only Margaret, after all. This is a last insult, I suppose. Was it to deliver it that you came here to-day?"
"No," he is beginning, "but——"
"You ask me questions," continues she, brushing his words aside with a wave of her small hand. "And I—I—have I no questions to ask?" She stops, as if suffocating.
"You have, God knows," says he. "And"—he hesitates—"I don't expect you to believe me, but—that old folly—it is dead."
"Dead?" She shakes her head. "What killed it?"
"You!" says Rylton.