They are sometimes not entirely stamped out during a long lifetime.
That evening Von Rosen came to call on Annie and she received him alone in the best parlour.

She felt embarrassed and shy, but very happy.

Her lover brought her an engagement ring, a great pearl, which had been his mother's and put it on her finger, and Annie eyed her finger with a big round gaze like a bird's.

Von Rosen laughed at the girl holding up her hand and staring at the beringed finger.
"Don't you like it, dear ?" he said.
"It is the most beautiful ring I ever saw," said Annie, "but I keep thinking it may not be true." "The truest things in the world are the things which do not seem so," he said, and caught up the slender hand and kissed the ring and the finger.
Margaret on the verandah had seen Von Rosen enter the Eustace house and had guessed dully at the reason.

She had always thought that Von Rosen would eventually marry Alice Mendon and she wondered a little, but not much.