“Let me look at your ring, Bartholomew,” she said, stretching her hand to take it.
At this, Bartholomew made as if she had been struck in the breast by a rogue. She started back a pace or two, clenched her hand, and flung it away from her with a gesture that was noble in the extreme. “No,” she said, with resolute dignity, her Ladyship might look if she pleased, but as for taking off her wedding ring, not the Archbishop nor the Pope nor Queen Victoria on her throne could force her to do that. Her Thomas had put it on her finger twenty-five years, six months, three weeks ago; she had slept in it; worked in it; washed in it; prayed in it; and proposed to be buried in it. In fact, Orlando understood her to say, but her voice was much broken with emotion, that it was by the gleam on her wedding ring that she would be assigned her station among the angels and its lustre would be tarnished forever if she let it out of her keeping for a second.
“Heaven help us,” said Orlando, standing at the window and watching the pigeons at their pranks, “what a world we live in! What a world to be sure!” Its complexities amazed her. It now seemed to her that the whole world was ringed with gold. She went in to dinner. Wedding rings abounded. She went to church. Wedding rings were everywhere. She drove out. Gold, or pinchbeck, thin, thick, plain, smooth, they glowed dully on every hand. Rings filled the jewellers’ shops, not the flashing pastes and diamonds of Orlando’s recollection, but simple bands without a stone in them. At the same time, she began to notice a new habit among the town people. In the old days one would meet a boy trifling with a girl under a hawthorn hedge frequently enough. Orlando had flicked many a couple with the tip of her whip and laughed and passed on. Now, all that was changed. Couples trudged and plodded in