“N-no. Just afterwards.”
“Ah! You weren’t free, you thought. Otherwise——May I ask if you would have accepted him?”
“You’ve no right to ask!”
“I know that,” he admitted angrily, “but have you—had you a right to make me look foolish—about him?”
“I never have done that!” I snapped. “You believe me that last night was an accident.”
“Yes,” he argued, “but you must confess that other things look rather mysterious.”
“Mysterious? Need you talk about things being mysterious,” I argued back, “when the whole of what you wanted me for has been such a mystery to me? You’ve never given me a hint of the reason!”
“I haven’t been able to! You were to have known later! But about this other——”
He broke off as a mild-looking old man plumped himself down on the green seat next his, and began to scatter crumbs out of a paper-bag to the sooty sparrows twittering on the path.