"I was not aware that you had asked me."
"I have, then. Will you?"
"I cannot tell," she said. "I cannot tell. Don't ask me to say more now."
"I must say," he retorted, rather offended, "that I can't be very much flattered by the way you talk."
"But you know how dreadfully sudden"—
The lie stuck in her throat, and refused to be uttered.
"Is it? How blind you must have been! Couldn't you see all summer that I was smashed?"
Patty was conscious of a wild desire to strangle her lover, and then fling herself under the wheels of the carriage. She longed to get possession of the whip, and lash the gray span into a gallop.
"I am fearfully cold and hungry," she said, feigning a shiver. "Do drive faster."
Clarence was ill pleased with the result of his wooing; yet the fact that he had not been absolutely refused made it needful for him to restrain his impatience. He whipped up his horses, and the carriage bowled along the road in a way that at another time would have filled Patty with delight. As it was, she was conscious of a passing thought that it lay in her power to become the mistress of this dashing equipage, and with the thought came fresh self-condemnation. At her gate she was only coldly civil to Clarence, who drove away, and relieved his feelings by swearing at his horses.