He paused, and Deb smiled into his handsome but disgusted face.

“Ah, is that to be a test of love?” she asked.  “I understand.  I am to choose between you.  Well”—­she rose, towering, drawing the big diamond from her engagement finger—­“I am going to her now.  I ought to have been there hours ago, but waited back to receive you.  Good-bye!  And pray, don’t come again to this contaminated house.  We have too horribly gone down in the world.  I know it, and I would not have you compromised on any account.  We Pennycuicks, we don’t abandon our belongings, especially when they may be dying; we sink or swim together.”  She held the jewel out to him.

“What rot!” he blurted vulgarly, flushing with anger that was not unmixed with shame.  “Why will you wilfully misunderstand me?  Put it on, Deb—­put it on, and don’t be so childish.”

“I will not put it on,” said she, “until you apologise for the things you have been saying to me, and the manner of your saying them.”

“My dear child, I do apologise humbly, if I have said what I shouldn’t.  Perhaps I have; but I thought we were past the need for reserves and for weighing words, you and I. And really, Debbie, you know—­”

“Hush!” She stopped him from further arguing; but she did not stop him from taking her hand and cramming the diamond back into its old place.  “I must go.  Father cannot—­he is ill himself; and Miss Keene is too frightfully modest to nurse him alone, so that I must send Keziah back, and stay—­”

“Can’t Miss Keene go and send her back, and stay?”

“Oh, she would be no use in such an illness as Mary’s.  And I must see for myself how things are—­whether they are taking proper care of the poor, unfortunate child—­”

“Is she so very ill?  I did not know that.”

There was commiseration in his tone, but in his heart he hoped that the deservedly sick woman would crown her escapades by dying as quickly as possible.  Then, perhaps, he could forgive her.

Deb gave him sundry confidences.  On his appearing to take them in a proper spirit, she gave him some more tea.  And so they lapsed into their normal relations.  When she again urged the need for her to be getting off on her errand of mercy, he magnanimously offered to drive her.  She accepted with a full heart, and her arms about his neck.  While she was getting ready, he repacked his portmanteau, and ordered it to be put into the buggy.

“It’s no use my going back,” he said to her, when they were on the road, “with you away, and your father too ill to see me.  I’ll put up at the hotel tonight, and go on to town in the morning.  You can send for me there whenever you want me, you know.”

“Just as you like, dear,” said Deb quietly; and for the rest of their journey they talked commonplaces.

When they reached the parsonage gate, from which the maid-of-all-work and a group of street gossips scattered in panic at their approach, the lovers shook hands perfunctorily.