rom moral law? What was done could not be undone; but it could be
righted. He drew off from the little finger of his left hand that iron
ring which, after a twinge of rheumatism, he had to-day resumed.

"Wear it," he said.

"You mean--?" She leapt to her feet.

"That we are engaged. I hope you don't think we have any choice?"

She clapped her hands, like the child she was, and adjusted the ring.

"It is very pretty," she said.

"It is very simple," he answered lightly. "But," he added, with a change
of tone, "it is very durable. And that is the important thing. For I
shall not be in a position to marry before I am forty."

A shadow of disappointment hovered over Katie's clear young brow, but
was instantly chased away by the thought that to be engaged was almost
as splendid as to be married.

"Recently," said her lover, "I meditated leaving Oxford for Australia.
But now that you have come into my life, I am compelled to drop that
notion, and to carve out the career I had first set for myself. A year
hence, if I get a Second in Greats--and I SHALL" he said, with a
fierce look that entranced her--"I shall have a very good chance of an
assistant-mastership in a good private school. In eighteen years, if I
am careful--and, with you waiting for me, I SHALL be careful--my savings
will enable me to start a small school of my own, and to take a wife.
Even then it would be more prudent to wait another five years, no doubt.
But there was always a streak of madness in the Noakses. I say 'Prudence
to the winds!'"

"Ah, don't say that!" exclaimed Katie, laying a hand on his sleeve.

"You are right. Never hesitate to curb me. And," he said, touching the
ring, "an idea has just occurred to me. When the time comes, let this
be the wedding-ring. Gold is gaudy--not at all the thing for a
schoolmaster's bride. It is a pity," he muttered, examining her through
his spectacles, "that your hair is so golden. A schoolmaster's bride
should--Good heavens! Those ear-rings! Where did you get THEM?"

"They were given to me to-day," Katie faltered. "The Duke gave me them."

"Indeed?"

"Please, sir, he gave me them as a memento."

"And that memento shall immediately be handed over to his executors."

"Yes, sir."

"I should think so!" was on the tip of Noaks' tongue, but suddenly he
ceased to see the pearls as trinkets finite and inapposite--saw them,
in a flash, as things transmutable by sale hereafter into desks, forms,
black-board