“I believe you are engaged to her.”
“Not as much as you are to Hickson.”
Christine laughed. “From the way you describe her,” she said, “I believe she’d make a perfect wife for Ned.”
“Oh, she’s much too good for him.”
“Thank you. You seem to think I’ll do nicely for him.”
“Ah, but she’s much better than you are.”
“And yet you said you’d rather have me here than her.”
He smiled. “I think,” he said, and Christine rather waited for his next words, “I think I shall go down and see if I can’t get the furnace going.”
Nevertheless, she said to herself when he was gone, “I should not feel at all easy about him, if I were the other girl.”
She knew there was no prospect of their being rescued that night. When the sleigh arrived at the Usshers’, if it ever did arrive, its empty shattered condition would suggest an accident. The Usshers were at that moment probably searching for them in ditches, and hedges. The marks of the sleigh would be quickly obliterated by the storm. No, she thought comfortably, there was no escape from the fact that their situation was compromising. The only question was how could the matter be most tactfully called to his attention. At the moment he seemed happily unaware that such things as the proprieties existed.