"You are engaged to Eugene?"
"Of course."
"You are also engaged to Spencer Haddington."
"It's untrue; you know it's untrue. Are you an old woman, to think a girl can't speak to a man without being engaged to him?"
"I must congratulate you on your liberality of view, Miss Bernard. I had hardly given you credit for it. But you know it isn't untrue. You are under a promise to give Haddington your hand in three months: not, mark you, a conditional promise—an absolute promise."
"That is not a happy guess."
"It's not a guess at all. No doubt you mean it to be conditional. He understood, and you meant him to understand, it as an absolute promise."
"How dare you accuse me of such things?"
"Nothing short of absolute knowledge would so far embolden me."
"Absolute knowledge?"