“What on earth for?”
“What for, Tots? Why, to see you! And, I say! How awfully charming and clever and delightful he is! And so handsome! Such a real artist’s head, I call it! Exactly like a Vandyke of Charles the First! Oh, my dear! Don’t tell me you’ve gone and got engaged to somebody else, when there’s such a really wonderful person so desperately in love with you!”
“Who says he’s in love with me?”
“Why, he does, of course. Didn’t you know? You must have. Didn’t you?”
“N-no.”
Slowly I dropped my gloves and umbrella and vanity-bag and paper on to the table. Of course I have “known,” at the back of my mind, all the time about Sydney. But however positive a girl may be that a man cares for her, until he’s told her so she’s never certain. This may sound Irish—to a man. Any girl understands....
To hear the fact proclaimed by Cicely’s lips—which really, I do believe, would blurt out anything that came into her red head!—gave me the same shock of surprise that it would have done even if I’d never received little attentions from Sydney, never heard his neatly-turned compliments, never seen those handsome brown eyes of his fixed upon me in unmistakable admiration, or noticed the blank mask that had suddenly fallen over them yesterday, when I broke to the Vandeleurs the news of my so-called engagement. Cicely went on with her tale, enjoying it thoroughly.
“My dear Tots, you must have known. He’s wanted to marry you ever since you were a slip of a schoolgirl with a little proud pearl of a face and that lovely dark hair of yours in a great mane down to your waist. Even then he always meant to propose to you.”
“And he tells you that? Not me?”
Here I sat down suddenly in the elbow-chair with the one arm “that’s always a-comin’ off, drat it!” as Mrs. Skinner says.