“Then where’s your engagement ring?”
“Where I choose to keep it.”
The retort lacked originality and conviction.
“You can’t send it back to him, because you don’t know where he is. And what did Mrs. Conover mean by telling mother that Mr. Trevor had broken off the engagement?”
“She never told her any such thing,” cried Peggy mendaciously. For Mrs. Conover had committed the indiscretion under assurance of silence.
“Pardon me,” said Nancy, much on her dignity. “Of course I understand your denying it. It isn’t pleasant to be thrown over by any man—but by a man like Doggie Trevor——”
“You’re a spiteful beast, Nancy, and I’ll never speak to you again. You’ve neither womanly decency nor Christian feeling.” And Peggy marched out of the doctor’s house.
As a result of the quarrel, however, she resumed the wearing of the ring, which she flaunted defiantly with left hand deliberately ungloved. Hitherto she had not been certain of the continuance of the engagement. Marmaduke’s repudiation was definite enough; but it had been dictated by his sensitive honour. It lay with her to agree or decline. She had passed through wearisome days of doubt. A physically sound fighting man sent about his business as being unfit for war does not appear a romantic figure in a girl’s eyes. She was bitterly disappointed with Doggie for the sudden withering of her hopes. Had he fulfilled them she could have loved him wholeheartedly, after the simple way of women; for her sex, exhilarated by the barbaric convulsion of the land, clamoured for something heroic, something at least intensely masculine, in which she could find feminine exultation. She also felt resentment at his flight from the Savoy, his silence and practical disappearance. Although not blaming him unjustly, she failed to realize the spiritual piteousness of his plight. If the war has done anything in this country, it has saved the young women of the gentler classes, at any rate, from the abyss of sordid and cynical materialism. Hesitating to announce the rupture of the engagement, she allowed it to remain in a state of suspended animation, and as a symbolic act, ceased to wear the ring. Nancy’s taunts had goaded her to a more heroic attitude. The first person to whom she showed the newly-ringed hand was her mother.
“The engagement isn’t off until I declare it’s off. I’m going to play the game.”
“You know best, dear,” said the gentle Mrs. Conover. “But it’s all very upsetting.”