"Quite well, thank you," said Betty. "And how is your wife? I ought to have asked yesterday, but I forgot."
"My wife?"
"Oh, perhaps you aren't married yet. Of course my father told me of your engagement."
She crumbled bread and smiled pleasantly.
"So that's it," thought Vernon. "Fool that I was to forget it!"
"I am not married," he said coldly, "nor have I ever been engaged to be married."
And he ate eggs stolidly wondering what her next move would be. It was one that surprised him. For she leaned towards him and said in a perfectly new voice:
"Couldn't you get Franz to move you a little more this way? One can't shout across these acres of tablecloth, and I've heaps of things to tell you."
He moved nearer, and once again he wronged Betty by a mental shrinking. Was she really going to own that she had resented the news of his engagement? She was really hopeless. He began to bristle defensively.