'Then I have only been a cat's-paw, and you have loved, if it is in your nature to love, another all the time?' said Roland hoarsely, as he drew back a pace with something of horror and disgust in his face now.
Almost pitifully did this cruel girl regard his face, which had become ashy gray, the wounded and despairing love he felt for her passing away from his eyes, while his figure, she could not but admit, was straight, handsome, and proud in bearing as ever, when compared with that of the other, who was in her mind now.
'All is over, then, and there is no need to torture or humiliate me further,' said he.
'All is over—yes,' she replied, with a real or affected sob; 'and you will, I hope, bless the day when I left you free to win a richer bride than I am, Roland. Forgive me, and let us part friends.'
'Friends!' he exclaimed, in a low voice of reproach, bitterness, and rage curiously mingled.
Resolute to act out the scene to the last detail, she slowly drew her engagement ring off her finger—like the marriage ring, the woman's badge of servitude according to the old English idea, but of eternity with every other people, past or present—laid it on a table near him, and gliding away without another word or glance, they separated, and Roland stood for a minute or so as if turned to stone.
Then, like one in a dream, he found himself walking slowly to and fro, forgetful even of his temporary lameness, on the terraced path beneath the towering walls of the old house.
The engagement ring—how tiny it looked!—was in his hand, and with something like a malediction he tossed it into a sheet of deep ornamental water that lay thereby, and there too, perhaps, he would have tossed all the other beautiful and valuable presents he had given her; but these the fair Annot did not as yet see her way to returning, and, sooth to say, he never thought of them.
So—so he was 'thrown over' for one who seemed most suddenly and unaccountably to have come upon the tapis, but chiefly because he was a kind of outcast—a disinherited man. Had she not told him so in the plainest language?
The situation was a grotesquely humiliating one.