CHAPTER IX
THE LOVER WHO CAME TOO LATE
But here, in our flat, I found to my amazement that someone had been before me with the news.
Cicely’s marigold-coloured hair and flushed face reared themselves up excitedly from the faded couch cushions as I came in.
“I say! Tots! What’s all this?—Look here, what is the meaning of it?” she cried breathlessly. “What’s this wild story about you being engaged to be married? Do say it isn’t true;—it can’t be! is it?”
“Who in the world,” I demanded, standing by our rickety old table in the middle of the room and staring at her as she sat up leaning on her elbow, “told you anything about it?”
“Well, who d’you suppose? Who would?”
I glanced quickly at the tray on the table, crowded with the débris of what had been tea for two, one saucer piled high with cigarette-ends that told their own tale. Who had been? One of Cicely’s Slade girls? But how would they know? Whoever it was must have stayed hours!
“It was your friend”—Cicely announced this even as the cork hurls itself from an unwired bottle of champagne—“Mr. Sydney Vandeleur!”
“Sydney—he’s been here?”
“Well, of course!”