"Another girl, I suppose?" she demanded, turning away to look at herself in the mirror.
He shivered. He was in a curious state of mind but there seemed to him something heretical in placing Edith among the same sex.
"It is an engagement I can't very well break," he confessed. "I'll come in again."
"You needn't," she declared, curtly. "When I say a thing, I mean it.
I've done with you."
Burton crossed the threshold into the smaller room, where Mr.
Waddington appeared to be deriving a certain amount of beatific
satisfaction from sitting in an easy-chair and having his hand held by
Miss Milly. They both looked at him, as he entered, in some surprise.
"What have you two been going on about?" the young lady asked. "I heard
Maud speaking up at you. Some lovers' quarrel, I suppose?"
The moment was passing. Burton laughed—a little hardly, perhaps, but boisterously.
"Maud's mad with me," he explained. "I thought I could take her out to-night. Remembered afterwards I couldn't. Say, old man, you're going it a bit, aren't you?" he continued, shaking his head at his late employer.
Mr. Waddington held his companion's hand more tenderly than ever.
"At your age," he remarked, severely, "you shouldn't notice such things.
Milly and I are old friends, aren't we?" he added, drawing her to him.