"You must make up your mind to break with him," said Kindelon, with undoubted gravity.
"And why?" she quickly questioned.
"He abominates me."
"Oh, nonsense! And even if he does, he will change in time ... I thought of writing him to-day," Pauline slowly proceeded. "But I did not. I have put off all that sort of thing shamefully."
"All that sort of thing?"
"Yes—writing to people that I am engaged, you know. That is the invariable custom. You must announce your intended matrimonial step in due form."
He looked at her with a pitying smile which she thought became him most charmingly. "And you have procrastinated from sheer dread, my poor Pauline!" he murmured, lifting her hand to his lips and letting it rest against them. "Dread of an explosion—of a distressing nervous ordeal. How I read your adroit little deceits!"
She withdrew her hand, momentarily counterfeiting annoyance. "You absurd would-be seer!" she exclaimed. "No, I'll call you a raven. But you can't depress me by your ominous wing-flapping! I thought Aunt Cynthia would drop in yesterday; I thought most certainly that she would drop in to-day. That is my reason for not making our engagement transpire through letter."
"I see," said Kindelon, with a comic, quizzical sombreness. "You didn't want to open your guns on the enemy; you were waiting for at least a show of offensive attack...."
But, as it chanced, Mrs. Poughkeepsie did drop in upon Pauline at about two o'clock the next day. She came unattended by Sallie, but she had important and indeed momentous news to impart concerning Sallie. As regarded Pauline's engagement, she was, of course, in total ignorance of it. But she chose to deliver her own supreme tidings with no suggestion of impulsive haste.