Above all, the minister like to hear and to talk about his eldest and favorite grandchild--his name-child, too--Alexander Cardross Bruce.
But on this subject, usually the never-ceasing topic at the Manse, Helen was for once profoundly silent.

Even when her father had dropped asleep, as in his feebleness of age he frequently did in the very midst of conversation, she sat restlessly fingering her wedding-ring, and another which she wore as a sort of guard to it, the only jewel she possessed.

It was a very large diamond, set in a plain hoop of gold.
The earl had given it to her a few months after she came back to Cairnforth, when her persistent refusal of all his offered kindnesses had almost produced a breach between them--at least the nearest approach to a quarrel they had ever known.

She, seeing how deeply she had wounded him, had accepted this ring as a pledge of amity, and had worn it ever since--by his earnest request--until it had become as familiar to her finger as the one beside it.

But now she kept looking at it, and taking it off and on with a troubled air.
"I am going to ask you a strange question, Lord Cairnforth--a rude one, if you and I were not such old friends that we do not mind any thing we say to one another." "Say on." "Is this ring of mine very valuable ?" "Rather so." "Worth how much ?" "You certainly are rude, Helen," replied the earl, with a smile.