"Judge for yourself. If a girl cared two straws for a man, would she in response to an offer of marriage, after a journey of eleven thousand miles taken by that unfortunate fellow for her sake, sit down and begin to strum on the piano? I ask you, would any girl with a scrap of feeling or of heart do such an outrageous thing?"
"What did she play?"
"How am I to know? And I'm sure I don't care. I have no ear for music. Something very noisy and jingly, that's all I heard."
"You didn't recognise the waltz you used to dance together, then?" and Pearl, without looking at him, began putting straight the little ivory netsuke [3] on her mantelpiece.
[ [3] Carved objects that attach the tobacco pouch.
"By Jove!" exclaimed Ralph, jumping from his seat, "you don't mean to tell me she was playing that! Now you mention it, the tune did seem familiar to me. You mean, then, that--Good Heavens! I see it all now. Mrs. Nugent, what an infernal idiot I have been!"
"Yes," said Pearl quietly, "perhaps you have been rather a goose."
"But how the dickens was I to know? Who would ever have imagined she would act in such an extraordinary way?"
"In all your dealings with that young woman you must bear in mind that she never does things quite like other people," replied Pearl. "That must always be taken into consideration, and your own conduct consequently must be dependent on this knowledge. So, instead of rushing off to her instantly again, as I see you are dying to do, I should refrain if I were you."
"But what am I to do?"