Linburne turned on him. “Really, Mr. Riatt,” he said, “you don’t take an idea very quickly. You have just heard Miss Fenimer say that she did not love you and that she considered your engagement at an end.”
“I heard her say she had told you that.”
“You mean to imply that she said what was untrue?”
“I could answer your question better,” said Riatt, “if I understood a little more clearly what your connection with this whole situation is.”
“The connection of any old friend who does not care to see Miss Fenimer neglected and humiliated,” answered Linburne, all the more hotly because he knew it was an awkward question.
Perhaps the young poet had not been so wrong in attaching the name of Helen to Miss Fenimer, for she sat now as calmly interested in the conflict developing before her, as Helen when she sat on the walls of Troy and designated the Greek heroes for the amusement of her newer friends.
“May I ask, Mr. Riatt, what rights in the matter you consider that you have?” Linburne pursued.
For Riatt, too, the question was an awkward one, but he had his answer ready. “The rights,” he said, “of a man who certainly was once engaged to Miss Fenimer, and who came East ignorant that the engagement was already at an end.”
Christine laughed. “Very neatly put,” she said.
“Neatly put,” exclaimed Linburne. “You talk as if we were playing a game.”