George Vavasor was not in a very happy mood when he left Queen Anne Street, after having flung his gift ring under the grate. Indeed there was much in his condition, as connected with the house which he was leaving, which could not but make him unhappy. Alice was engaged to be his wife, and had as yet said nothing to show that she meditated any breach of that engagement, but she had treated him in a way which made him long to throw her promise in her teeth. He was a man to whom any personal slight from a woman was unendurable. To slights from men, unless they were of a nature to provoke offence, he was indifferent. There was no man living for whose liking or disliking George Vavasor cared anything. But he did care much for the good opinion, or rather for the personal favour, of any woman to whom he had endeavoured to make himself agreeable. "I will marry you," Alice had said to him,--not in words, but in acts and looks, which were plainer than words,--"I will marry you for certain reasons of my own, which in my present condition make it seem that that arrangement will be more convenient to me than any other that I can make; but pray understand that there is no love mixed up with this. There is another man whom I love;--only, for those reasons above hinted, I do not care to marry him." It was thus that he read Alice's present treatment of him, and he was a man who could not endure this treatment with ease.

George Vavasor was not in a very happy mood when he left Queen Anne Street after flinging his ring in the fireplace. Indeed there was much to make him unhappy. Alice was engaged to be his wife, but she had treated him in a way which made him long to throw her promise in her teeth. He was a man to whom any personal slight from a woman was unendurable.
"I will marry you," Alice's behaviour had said to him, "for certain reasons of my own, which make that arrangement convenient; but pray understand that there is no love mixed up with this. There is another man whom I love; only I do not care to marry him." It was thus that he read Alice's treatment of him, and he could not endure it.
