"Oh, go on," says Hescott, seeing she is dying to speak. "A secret told to me is as lost as though you had dropped it down a well."
"You must remember first, then, that I should never have told you, only that you seemed to think she couldn't get married. It"—hesitating—"it's about Margaret!"
"Miss Knollys!" Hescott stares. "What has she been up to?"
"She has been refusing Colonel Neilson for years!" solemnly. "Only this very night she has refused him again; and all because of a silly old attachment to a man she knew when she was quite a girl."
"That must have been some time ago," says Hescott irreverently and unwisely.
"A very few years ago," severely. She rises. She is evidently disgusted with him. "Come back to the house," says she. "I am engaged for the next."
"A word," says Tom, rising and following her. He lays a detaining hand upon her soft, little, bare arm. "You blame her—Miss Knollys—for being faithful to an old attachment?"
"Y-es," says Tita slowly, as if thinking, and then again, "Yes!" with decision. "When the old attachment if of no use any longer, and when there is someone else."
"But if there was an old attachment, and"—Hescott's face is a little pale in the moonlight—"and practically—no one else—how then?"
"Eh?"