Adelaide _judging_ him, criticising _him_! All Ross's male instinct for unquestioning approval from the female was astir.

"You wish to break our engagement ?" he inquired, with a glance of cold anger that stiffened her pride and suppressed her impulse to try to gain time.
"You're free," said she, and her manner so piqued him, that to nerve himself to persist he had to think hard on the magnificence of Windrift and the many Howland millions and the rumored Ranger will.

She, in a series of jerks and pauses, took off the ring; with an expression and a gesture that gave no further hint of how she had valued it, both for its own beauty and for what it represented, she handed it to him.

"If that's all," she went on, "I'll go back to father." To perfect her pretense, she should have risen, shaken hands cheerfully with him, and sent him carelessly away.

She knew it; but she could not.
He was not the man to fail to note that she made no move to rise, or to fail to read the slightly strained expression in her eyes and about the corners of her mouth.