“Twice, Lily?” he said, pathetically; “I admit the other time—out at the club—but how have I offended you besides that?”
“In your very apology,” she told him scornfully. “You’ve just had the petty insolence to stand there and say I threw you over for Mr. McArdle!”
“But you did,” he said; and he seemed surprised that she should not admit it. “Why, it’s—why, Lily, everybody knows that!”
“What? You dare to repeat it?”
He looked at her in the most reasonable astonishment, his eyes widening. “But, Lily, I’m not the only one. Everybody repeats it.”
“Who does?”
“Everybody,” he said. “You certainly couldn’t expect a thing like this not to be talked about, with the whole place in the state of excitement it was about McArdle’s coming here, let alone what’s happened since. I had no idea you’d deny it to me now, though I supposed you might to other people, as a matter of form. Of course no one would believe it could be a coincidence.”
She stepped closer to him dangerously. “No one would believe what could be a coincidence, Henry Burnett?”
“That you threw me over just by chance the very day before McArdle came to town and you took that shot at him.”
“I did what?”