"Gallant John." She smiled at him. "Or mercenary John?" She opened her mouth to say more, hesitated, and then spoke anyway. "Do we have to wait until this evening? I know you have arranged a special candlelit dinner downstairs. But do we have to wait?"

He had the ring in his wallet. He had driven to Reading yesterday and got it from his father. His mother had died eight years ago. The ring was for his bride now. Not many of the family wives during the past three centuries had had the ring in time for their engagements.

He had always had strange feelings about the ring. His mother had not worn it a great deal, as she had had another engagement ring-the family ring had not come to her until fifteen years after her marriage. So he had not seen it much himself. Whenever he had, he had felt-how had he felt? It was almost impossible to put the feeling into words. Breathless? Nostalgic? Excited? Afraid? None of the four words, except perhaps the first, really described his feeling.

And the feeling had returned yesterday. He had thought perhaps it was the value of the ring and the knowledge that now it was in his keeping and that soon it would be on Allison's finger. But it was not so much the monetary value that had affected him as the historic value. Though that word was too cold, too clinical.

He had put it carefully in his wallet. He had checked and rechecked ever since to see that it was still there, even though the wallet had never left his person. But he had not unwrapped it or touched it. There was something about touching it-well, something that made him breathless. He could put it no more clearly than that. And he did not have to. He had never tried to explain the feeling to anyone else.

"No," he said now, reaching for his wallet. "There is no reason to wait. And I would rather do it here in private than in the dining room where someone else might notice and somehow intrude."