"Then it is Lady Day in three weeks," said the Duke, "and your book is at the printer's, with your name on it. You said you would answer me then."
"I did say so."
"I find I can't wait three weeks. I've waited thirty years to find out who I was, and it took you four days to tell me. Will you have me, Miss Blakeney? I am a second son and a sixth duke and a very bad singer. I've nothing to give you that's entirely mine except this." He took the ring off his right hand, the Rundell's ring, the bright clean copy, and held it out to her on his palm. "It's only a copy."
"So am I," said Frances, "of a sort. I'm the plain sister. The honest one. The one who copies things out." She looked at the ring. She did not take it yet. "If I say yes, Your Grace, it will be because you are the only man I have ever met who stood beside a page he could have torn out and didn't. Not for the dukedom. You'd have the dukedom whatever I said."
"I know. That's why I asked you here and not in the library."
The bell stopped. The curate came out of the vestry. Across the aisle, in the household pew, the Dowager Duchess of Halvergate, who had come in by the priest's door unseen, turned back her veil, and looked at the two of them, and did not look away.
Robin leaned forward across the green baize cushion. He had the old ring on his thumb, on its winding of black wool; he never took it off on Sundays.
"Papa taught me your name," he said to the Duke, very loudly, so that the third row turned round. "And now Aunt Fan has taught me to write mine. It's got the same letters as yours. Shall I show you after?"
"Yes," said Frances, to the Duke, under the curate's first sentence; and held out her hand, and he put his ring on it, which was very wrong of him in the middle of the service; and the whole parish of Halvergate stood up for the Exhortation, and the Duke stood up beside her, a little late, as if he were following a gun-carriage, and began, quite out of tune, to confess.