You try me.'
'What shall I ask for?'
'Anything.'
'Give me the ring off your finger,' she said. He at once took it
off his hand. 'Of course you know I am in joke. You don't imagine
that I would take it from you.' He still held it towards her.
'Lord Silverbridge, I expect that with you I may say a foolish
thing without being brought to sorrow by it. I know that that ring
belonged to your great uncle,--and to fifty Pallisers before.'
'What would it matter?'
'And it would be wholly useless to me, as I would not wear it.'
'Of course it would be too big,' said he, replacing the ring on
his own finger. 'But when I talk of anyone being in my good books,
I don't mean a thing like that. Don't you know there is nobody on
earth I--' there he paused and blushed, and she sat motionless,
looking at him, expecting, with her colour too somewhat raised,--
'whom I like so well as I do you?' It was a lame conclusion. She
felt it to be lame. But as regarded him, the lameness of the
moment had come from a timidity which forbade him to say the word
'love' even though he had meant to say it.
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