"I've known her for twenty years!" was the youth's unexpected exclamation. "We grew up together, out West."
"Where out West?" I asked.
"In Medicine Hat—that's a Canadian prairie town."
"But she's younger than you?"
"Only two years. She's twenty-two; I'm twenty-four. She changed her name from Wilson to Walter when she went on the stage."
"Then you are close friends?" I asked, for I could see the wine had loosened his reticent young tongue.
"Friends!" he scoffed. "I'm the man she promised to marry!"
Here, I told myself, was a pretty kettle of fish. I knew the man before me was not Adams. Yet it was several weeks now since Harriet Walter's engagement to young Adams had been officially announced. And there was nothing unstable or predaceous about the Harriet Walter I had known.
"Would you mind telling me just when she promised to marry you?" I asked. "Remember, this is not prying. I'm only trying to get behind that cobweb."
"She promised me over two years ago," he answered me, quite openly.