George Elliot's The Lifted Veil

“Do I despise it?” she answered, taking hold of a delicate gold chain which she always wore round her neck and drawing out the end from her bosom with my ring hanging to it; “it hurts me a little, I can tell you,” she said,with her usual dubious smile, “to wear it in that secret place; and since your poetical nature is so stupid as to prefer a more public position, I shall not endure the pain any longer.”