Verity crimsoned for the third time, slowly and painfully. She had never before known a moment’s embarrassment with Larrupper, but to-night he seemed like a stranger, with his black brows drawn together, and his gloomy eyes searching hers. There was something menacing about the set of his heavy shoulders and the droop of his bullet head.
“Yes,” she admitted in a low tone. “He—asked me to marry him. It doesn’t seem fair to tell you, but I think you know, without it. You needn’t be jealous,” she finished quickly, following an hysterical impulse to say the most hopelessly wrong thing possible.
“Jealous?” Larry’s dark face flushed violently. “Jealous of old Grant? Did you think I came bargin’ in at this time of night just to tell you I was jealous? Then you’re wrong. I came to ask you a straight question, an’ if you can give me a straight answer without any shilly-shallyin’—and the right one, mind you!—I’ll make a night of it with old Grange over the ’84 port. But if you can’t—if you can’t——!” A dog-like anticipation of trouble came into his dark eyes as he looked at her, and his hand shook on the mantelpiece, for everything hung on that question, and he was afraid both of the answer and of himself.
“It’s just this!” he said heavily. “A man doesn’t go askin’ girls to marry him without thinkin’ about it a bit beforehand, especially when he’s tuckered out like an Aunt Sally an’ a bit of Barnum mixed. Old Grant isn’t the sort, either, to be plungin’ into proposals without so much as a twinge of warnin’. He must have been goin’ that way for weeks, poor old chap, an’ gettin’ worked up for the jumpin’-off. Now I’m askin’ you—did you know he was fallin’ in love with you, or did you not?”
“Yes, I knew,” Verity answered, quietly but without hesitation, as he paused for breath. “It isn’t difficult to know a thing like that, Larry, whether one wants to or not.”
“No, I suppose it’s generally shoutin’,” he agreed moodily. “I’d have seen it myself if I’d gone to the trouble of lookin’. But there’s somethin’ more. A girl can’t help a man carin’ for her, but she can play fair, all the same. Did you do right by old Grant, my dear—or did you lend him a hand to makin’ a fool of himself, leadin’ him on with your smiles an’ your pretty little ways? Did you play fair by the parson, old girl—that’s what I’m wantin’ to know?”
She said nothing, this time, only turned her head away from him, and slid a hand over her eyes, while he stood beside her, breathing heavily, doggedly demanding the truth he hated but had already guessed.
“Oh, darlin’, can’t you lie to me!” she heard him say under his breath, passionately beseeching, and she shook her head without turning, knowing there was no need of words. He uttered a curious sound, half-sob, half-exclamation, and after that there was a long pause. Then she felt him leave her and move across to the door.
“I must be gettin’ off,” he said easily and cheerfully. “Old Grange will be freezin’, I’m afraid, an’ he’ll not get the ’84, after all, dear old thing! Hope you won’t be too dog-tired in the mornin’.”
She straightened herself then, and swung round, looking at him with miserable eyes.