'Are you awfully angry with me, Gladys? I always expected a letter from you. I thought you were so angry with me that I was afraid to write.'
'You were quite wrong, then. I was not angry at all. But why should I have written when you did not?'
This was rather unanswerable, and he hesitated a moment over his next words. He had to weigh them rather carefully for the ears of this singularly placid and self-possessed young lady, whose demeanour was so little index to her state of mind.
'Well, if I admit I was in the wrong all the time, though I really, upon my word, don't know very well what the row was about, will you forgive me?' he asked in his most irresistible manner, which was so far successful that the first approach to a smile he had seen since they met now appeared on her lips.
'You know very well what it was all about; you have not forgotten a word that passed, any more than I have,' she answered. 'But you ought to have written all the same. I am generous enough to admit, however, that you had more reason on your side than I was induced to admit that night. The experiment I tried has not been a success. Have you heard that Lizzie Hepburn has run away from us?'
He swallowed the choking sensation in his throat, and answered, with what indifference he could command,—
'Yes, I heard it.'
'And is that why you have come?' she asked, with a keen, curious glance at him,—'to crow over my downfall That is not generous in the least.'
'My darling, how can you think me capable of such meanness? Would it not be more charitable to think I came to condole and sympathise with you?'
'It would, of course,' she admitted, with a sigh; 'but I am rather suspicious of everybody. I am afraid I am not at all in a wholesome frame of mind.'