"No. And I don't feel it. Not to-day."
"And you think that she cares?"
"What do you think, sir?"
The Doctor threw up his hands. "Oh, lad, lad, there's all the wonder of it in her eyes when she looks at you."
When Derry went at last to find Jean, she was not in the library. He crossed the hall to the little drawing-room. His love sat by the fire alone.
"My darling—"
Thus she came to his arms. But even then he held her gently, worshipping her innocence and respecting it.
The next morning he brought her a ring. It was such a wonderful ring that she held her breath. She sat on the rose-colored davenport while he put it on her finger.
"If I had been the girl in the Toy Shop," she told him, "and you had been the shabby boy, you would have given me a gold band with three little stones—and I should have liked that, too."
"You shall have the gold ring some day, and it won't have stones in it—and it will be a wedding ring."