(Ah, no! Odette Charrier wouldn’t find it hard to jilt an airman or an archangel—for him!)
“It was she herself who told me, perfectly candidly, of her father’s idea of the offer of her hand to me. You know that rum French way they have—pretty awkward, that,” went on the Governor, beginning to speak almost as rapidly as for that dictation he used to gabble off to me. “I was in a tight corner then! There was the risk of turning a possible friend—and such a powerful one!—into a certain enemy. I knew how offended he’d be by a refusal that might seem due to reluctance! Then there was the young lady to consider—What’s the matter, don’t you follow me?”
“No—I don’t understand,” I made myself say quite coherently, “what you mean by ‘refusal.’”
“Well, she didn’t want to marry me! She’d got this aviator-chap. I didn’t want to marry anybody—then.”
(Then. Was he going to inflict upon me the whole of their love-story?)
“And I could only forestall the proposal she told me he meant to make by showing her father some really tangible proof that I was out of the question. You see?”
“Yes,” I said slowly. “I was—a nominal fiancée was to be the tangible proof.”
“Exactly. Well! Now comes the news that does away with that necessity. I’d been expecting the corroboration of it for some days. However, it’s out at last; here.” He tapped the paper. “It means that the alliance Waters-Charrier has been knocked on the head; it means that my firm isn’t going to be quite the almighty concern I hoped it might; but it also means that something—a big thing!—is saved out of the fire: namely, that I needn’t take these drastic measures to avoid Monsieur Charrier’s displeasure. If I don’t want to marry into his family, I can say so if I choose.”
(If—! He meant that now Odette and he could show that theirs was nothing but a love-match!)