"In love with whom?" cried the novelist, who had been pacing up and down the room, after the manner of his kind, but who stopped now at the foot of the bed, to spread his hands out eloquently. "With that young Overton?"
"With that young Overman. You were so short and sharp with him, you see, that you never even mastered his name."
"I was naturally short and sharp with a young fellow whom she had only seen two or three times in her life—once on the pier, once in the gardens, once or twice about the hotel. It was a piece of confounded presumption! We didn't even know who or what the fellow was!"
"He put you in the way of finding out, and you said you didn't want to know."
"No more I did," said Wolff Mason.
"You liked him well enough before he proposed to Ida."
"That may be. He had more idea of whist than any of the others, which is saying precious little. But his proposal was a piece of infernal impertinence, and I told him so."
"I am sorry you told him so, Wolff," said Mrs. Mason softly. "However, the affair is quite a thing of the past. You put a stop to it pretty effectually, and I daresay it was for the best. Only it is right you should know that young Overman and Ida met in Oxford Street yesterday, and that she has not slept all night for thinking about him."
"The villain!" cried Wolff Mason, excitedly. "I suppose he asked her to run away with him?"