"True, of course not. Well, after you left the library that time with Mark, the whole party broke up and dispersed about the house to prepare for this drive, all except myself. I stayed on—unluckily, as it turned out—to finish my novel, until I should be called to lunch. It interested me, and I thought myself sure of solitude for a little time, but in less than three minutes the door was re-opened, and Chandos came in."
"Well?" I say, as she makes a long pause.
"Unfortunately, it struck me that his coming back so soon again to where he knew I was alone looked, you know, rather particular—as if he wished to say something private to me; and—I had no desire to hear it.
"Oh, Bebe?"
"Well, believe me or not, as you will, I really, dreaded his saying anything on the—old topic—to such a degree that I rose and made as though I would instantly quit the room. Oh!" cries she, with an irrestrainable blush and movement of the hand, "I wish I had died before I did that."
"Why, darling?"
"Oh, need you ask? Don't you see how it betrayed my thoughts? Why, it looked as though I made quite sure he was going to propose again. Can't you understand how horrible it was?" says Bebe, burying her face in her hands, with a hysterical laugh. "He understood it so, at all events. He stopped right before me, and said, deliberately, with his eyes fixed on mine, 'Why do you leave the room? I came for a book, and for nothing else, I assure you.' Thus taken aback, I actually stammered and blushed like a ridiculous schoolgirl, and said, weakly, 'It is almost time to think of dressing. We start so soon. And besides—I—-' Could anything be more foolish? 'One would think I had the plague or the pestilence, the way you rush from a room the moment I enter it,' says he, impatiently.—'I swear I am not going to propose again. I have had enough of it. I have no desire whatever to marry a woman against her will. I asked you to be my wife, for the second time, a week or two ago, thinking my poverty had been the cause of your former refusal, and was justly punished for my conceit. Believe me, I have brains enough, to retain a lesson, once I have learned it; so you may sit down, Miss Beatoun, with the certainty that I shall never again offend you in that way.' I could never tell you how I felt, Phyllis, during the utterance of these words. My very blood was tingling with shame. My eyes would not be lifted; and, besides, they were full of tears. I felt that I hated both myself and him."
"It was a very curious speech for him to make," say I, feeling both puzzled and indignant with Chandos.
"I think he was quite right," declares she, veering round to resent what seems like an attack on my part. "It must have angered and disgusted him to see me so confident of his lasting affection as to imagine him ready to make a fresh offer every time people left us tete-a-tete. I think any man with spirit would have done just so. No one is to be blamed but myself."
"On the other hand, why should he conclude you thought anything of the sort?" I say, defending her stoutly in spite of herself. "He only proved the idea to be quite as uppermost in his mind as it was in yours. I would have said something to that effect had I been you."