The next instant Lady Ursula came in.
“Oh, here you are, Rosamund!” she said; “how do you do?”
“I am very well,” I answered. I did not want Lady Ursula to call me Rosamund. She sat down on the sofa with her hands crossed idly in her lap. Her face was full of interrogation; it said as plainly as face could:
“Now, what do you want, Rosamund? Have the goodness to say it, whatever it is, and go away.”
The look in her eyes was replied to steadily by mine. Then I said calmly: “I have come for my ring.”
When I said this Lady Ursula dropped her mask. War to the knife gleamed in her bright eyes.
“Oh! the ring,” she said; “well, you can’t have it, so there!”
At that instant Captain Valentine hastily re-entered the room. With a brief apology to me he turned to Lady Ursula and spoke:
“Here is your ring,” he said, taking up the morocco case, touching a spring and opening it. “I have had the central ruby properly fastened in; there is no fear of your losing it now.”
He was leaving the room again when an impulse, which I could not overcome, made me rush forward and lay my hand on the table.