“You saw it! It was signed.”
“Yes; by your friend Miss Harradine. That says nothing. You asked her to send it—wired the night before, perhaps.... Didn’t you?” he cross-examined me. “Didn’t you?”
“Well—if I did? Yes!”
“Why did you, Miss Trant?”
I looked away from him, mutinous but helpless, at the border of the path in front, with its little clumps of heat-shrivelled purple pansies, drooping over the powdery earth. There was something that no cross-examination should get out of me! Let him know that I couldn’t bear to stay in the same place with him—first, because he’d kissed me; next, because there was no reason that he should ever kiss me again ... every reason that he would not? Never!
“Why had you to go?”
“Oh!” I cried, with a little stamp of my shoe on the gravel. “Why need you pry into—into what’s my affair alone? Is even an official fiancée allowed to keep nothing to herself?”
“Very well,” he said savagely. Then, off at another tangent, “But at least you won’t tell me that the fellow didn’t want to marry you himself?”
“What difference does it make if he did? That was ages ago, months!” I let out hastily. “Anyhow—one’s not supposed to tell these things, but, as we’re talking business, I may tell you as a business-secret that I refused him!”
“You did?”—quickly. “Was this before—before our arrangement was made?”