“But your freedom?” Jill persisted, still holding the ring before his eyes. “Won’t you take that?”
“Oh, certainly,” he replied disagreeably, “but that doesn’t constitute my freedom, does it?” with a contemptuous glance at the small golden hoop in her hand.
“No, I suppose not,” the girl answered in a voice of such blank disappointment that St. John grinned despite his ill-humour; her lugubrious expression aroused his mirth. Jill saw nothing to laugh at. The situation had assumed for her quite a tragic aspect, and her eyes blazed with a very wrathful light as she gazed witheringly up into his broadly smiling face.
“I don’t see,” she observed icily, “that my remark called for any violent ebullition of mirth. I wasn’t aware that I had said anything funny. Is there insanity in your family?”
“Not that I know of,” he replied, taking possession of both ring and hand as he spoke, and keeping his hold despite her angry attempt to free herself. “’Pon my word, Jill, you’re enough to try a fellow’s patience. You deserved to be taken at your word just now, and didn’t expect to be, that’s the joke. And now I’ve got to put this ring back in its place, I suppose. The next time that you take it off for the childish satisfaction of dangling it an inch from my nose I shall keep it and give it to some other girl.”
“Miss Bolton perhaps?” remarked Jill in her nastiest tone.
“Don’t you think it would be better,” he suggested without looking at her, “to leave Evie’s name out of our disputes?”
“I don’t know whether you consider it gentlemanly,” Jill cried fiercely, “to try and make me feel mean?”
“I’m glad if I have succeeded in making you feel it,” he answered imperturbably, patting the ring in place, and slowly releasing her hand, “for you certainly are mean. Your meanness is, in fact, only to be equalled by your bad temper and that exceeds it. I am not blind to your faults you may observe; they are as plentiful as flies in summer, and equally irritating.”
“And to think,” exclaimed Jill in exasperation, “that I was going to give you up just for your personal benefit! I won’t now; if you try to back out of it I’ll have you up for breach of promise.”