I found my old sweetheart sitting in a low chair by the fire, a man standing on the hearthrug pulling his moustache. Emily and I both felt a thrill of old delight at meeting.
“I can hardly believe it is really you,” she said, laughing me one of the old intimate looks. She had changed a great deal. She was very handsome, but she had now a new self-confidence, a fine, free indifference.
“Let me introduce you. Mr. Renshaw, Cyril. Tom, you know who it is you have heard me speak often enough of Cyril. I am going to marry Tom in three weeks’ time,” she said, laughing.
“The devil you are!” I exclaimed involuntarily.
“If he will have me,” she added, quite as a playful afterthought.
Tom was a well-built fair man, smoothly, almost delicately tanned. There was something soldierly in his bearing, something self-conscious in the way he bent his head and pulled his moustache, something charming and fresh in the way he laughed at Emily’s last preposterous speech.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.
“Why didn’t you ask me?” she retorted, arching her brows.
“Mr. Renshaw,” I said. “You have out-manoeuvred me all unawares, quite indecently.”
“I am very sorry,” he said, giving one more twist to his moustache, then breaking into a loud, short laugh at his joke.