“I am glad to hear it.  I am sure I have been uncomfortable enough thinking about him sometimes.  Lady Bellamy, will you do something for me?”

“What is that, Mr. Heigham?”

“Tell Angela all about me.”

“But would that be quite honourable, Mr. Heigham—­under the conditions of your engagement, I mean?”

“You never promised not to talk about me; I only promised not to attempt verbal or written communication with Angela.”

“Well, I will tell her that I met you, and that you are well, and, if Philip will allow me, I will tell her more; but of course I don’t know if he will or not.  What ring is that you wear?”

“It is one that Angela gave me when we became engaged.  It was her mother’s.”

“Will you let me look at it?”

Arthur held out his hand.  The ring was an antique, a large emerald, cut like a seal and heavily set in a band of dull gold.  On the face of the stone were engraved some mysterious characters.

“What is that engraved on the stone?”

“I am not sure; but Angela told me that Mr. Fraser had taken an impression of it, and forwarded it to a great Oriental scholar.  His friend said that the stone must be extremely ancient, as the character is a form of Sanscrit, and that he believed the word to mean ’For ever’ or ‘Eternity.’  Angela said that it had been in her mother’s family for generations, and was supposed to have been brought from the East about the year 1700.  That is all I know about it.”

“The motto is better suited to a wedding-ring than to an engagement stone,” said Lady Bellamy, with one of her dark smiles.

“Why?”

“Because engagements are like promises and pie-crust, made to be broken.”

“I hope that will not be the case with ours, however,” said Arthur, attempting a laugh.

“I hope not, I am sure; but never pin your faith absolutely to any woman, or you will regret it.  Always accept her oaths and protestations as you would a political statement, politely, and with an appearance of perfect faith, but with a certain grain of mistrust.  Woman’s fidelity is in the main a fiction.  We are faithful just as men are, so long as it suits us to be so; with this difference however, men play false from passion or impulse, women from calculation.”

“You do not draw a pleasing picture of your own sex.”

“When is the truth pleasing?  It is only when we clothe its nakedness with the rags of imagination, or sweeten it with fiction, that it can please.  Of itself, it is so ugly a thing that society in its refinement will not even hear it, but prefers to employ a corresponding formula.  Thus all passion, however vile, is called by the name of ‘love,’ all superstitious terror and grovelling attempts to conciliate the unseen are known as ‘religion,’ while selfish greed and the hungry lust for power masquerade as laudable ‘ambition.’  Men and women, especially women, hate the truth, because, like the electric light, it shows them as they are, and that is vile.  It has grown so strange to them from disuse that, like Pilate, they do not even know what it is!  I was going to say, however, that if you care to trust me with it, I think I see how I can take a message to Angela for you—­without either causing you to break your promise or doing anything dishonourable myself.”