“No! oh, no!  The ring did not come from him, Mr. Traverse.”

“My thoughts have not been pleasant to me since my eyes rested upon this, and heard the rumor connected with it.  Dexie, be honest with me and tell me what it means.”

Dexie slipped the ring back on her finger, and shook her head.

“It has been discussed enough, Mr. Traverse, please say no more about it,” she said, shrinking away from the eager, searching looks that made every moment more embarrassing to her.

“Just a moment, Dexie!  Your father said that you asked Mr. Gurney to release you from any promise between you.  When speaking of him that evening, you told me that you never had met anyone that you liked better.  Tell me, Dexie, have you met anyone since then, that you asked to be free?” and he bent nearer and looked intently into her face.

Why had he put such a question to her?  If she said “No,” it would imply that she still cared for one that was betrothed to another; but she could not say “Yes,” for that might betray her secret.

Guy’s face was very near her own, as she answered with a beating heart: 

“You have no right to put such a question to me, Mr. Traverse, and please to remember that I am ‘Dexie’ to no man but papa,” and there was a touch of anger in her tone, to which, however, Guy gave no heed.

“Excuse me, Miss Dexie, if I have offended you,” and a bright smile lit up his face.  “I had no right to ask that question, but I shall endeavor to find it out all the same,” a glow of satisfaction filling his heart.

Gussie entered at this moment and Dexie escaped to her room, but Guy did not think his case quite hopeless as he walked home, thinking it over.

“I believe she does care for me; but shall I ever be able to make her confess it?  She must know how I love her.  However, I feel free to go to the house as usual, and I may not, after all, repeat the moth-and-candle story, as I feared.”

But try as he would, he could not break through the reserve that now surrounded Dexie like a mantle.  She welcomed him with the fewest possible words when he called on Mr. Sherwood, and she seemed so cool and stiff that he felt chilled to the heart.  It was seldom, indeed, that she addressed a remark to him during an evening.  Yet there were times when, suddenly turning his eyes in her direction, he would find her looking at him so intently that his heart would throb with hope and gladness, only to be chilled again at the first word that fell from her lips.  For weeks this battle with hope and fear went on, and their friendly intercourse seemed to have come to an end.  Her visits to the T. and B. rooms were fewer than ever, and the hour for choir practice was so often changed that he found it almost impossible to see her a moment alone.  His visits to the house gave him little pleasure.  Mr. Sherwood always brightened up when he arrived, and but for the pleasure these visits gave to the sick man Guy would have hesitated about making them at all.