"And I was just going to tell you, Katharine, how, when I woke this morning, everything seemed so clear in my head that if I'd had a pencil I believe I could have written quite a long chapter.

When we're out on our drive I shall find us a house.

A few trees round it, and a little garden, a pond with a Chinese duck, a study for your father, a study for me, and a sitting room for Katharine, because then she'll be a married lady." At this Katharine shivered a little, drew up to the fire, and warmed her hands by spreading them over the topmost peak of the coal.

She wished to bring the talk back to marriage again, in order to hear Aunt Charlotte's views, but she did not know how to do this.
"Let me look at your engagement-ring, Aunt Charlotte," she said, noticing her own.
She took the cluster of green stones and turned it round and round, but she did not know what to say next.
"That poor old ring was a sad disappointment to me when I first had it," Lady Otway mused.

"I'd set my heart on a diamond ring, but I never liked to tell Frank, naturally.