Disengaging one hand, her arm stole around his neck as she whispered, "I would go to the ends of the earth with you now."
He held her head away, the better to look into her face, as he said with a sigh of contentment: "Now I can breathe easy! You see I did not dare believe you would really come,—you've ever been such a capricious little rebel."
Presently he asked, as he toyed with her small fingers, "Where got you all these different rings, little one?" and a note almost of jealousy sounded in his voice. "Here be many pretty brilliants—I thought maids in this country never wore such. How comes such a baby as you with a ring like this?" And he lifted her hand to look at the one which had attracted his special notice.
"My father gave it to me," she said quietly; "it was my mother's—whom I never saw."
He pressed his lips to the sparkling circlet. "My little wife, I'll be mother, father—all things else to you. All of them together could not love you more truly and sacredly than do I. Ah, my darling, you have but poor knowledge of the way I love you, and how highly I prize your esteem. How can you, after the rough wooing to which I treated you?"
Then he whispered, "And where is the ruby ring?"
He felt her head stir uneasily against his shoulder, "Surely you did not throw it away?" he asked after a moment's waiting.
Dorothy laughed, softly and happily.
"You told me that night at Master Weeks'," she whispered, "that you did not believe what my lips said, but what my eyes had shown you."
"Aye, so I did, and so I thought when I spoke. But until now I've been tossed about with such conflicting thoughts as scarce to know what to think."