“Don’t bore so, Jock,” said Elvira pettishly. “It was no doing of mine, and I don’t see why I should be teased.”
“Then you wish me to tell him that he is to take your silence as a release from you.”
“I authorise nothing,” she said. “I hate it all.”
“Look here, Elvira,” said Jock, “do you know your own mind? Nobody wants you to take Allen. In fact, I think he is much better quit of you; but it is due to him, and still more to yourself, to cancel the old affair before beginning a new one.”
“Who told you I was beginning a new one?” asked she pertly.
“No one can blame you, provided you let him loose first. It is considered respectable, you know, to be off with the old love before you are on with the new. Nay, it may be only a superstition.”
“Superstition!” she repeated in an awed voice that gave him his cue, and he went on—“Oh yes, a lady has been even known to come and shake hands with the other party after he had been hanged to give back her troth, lest he should haunt her.”
“Allen isn’t hanged,” said Elvira, half frightened, half cross. “Why doesn’t he come himself?”
“Shall he?” said Jock.
“My dear child, I’ve been running madly up and down for you!” cried Lady Flora, suddenly descending on them, and carrying off her charge with a cursory nod to the Guardsman, marking the difference between a detrimental and even the third son of a millionaire.