"It has a great deal to do with it, as you will see," Anthony said, with a great, quivering sigh. "For the fact of your presence I alone will take the blame."
"Thanks," said Mary.
"And since the blame is mine, I will make what amends I can," Anthony Fry concluded, and nerved though he was, his voice broke. "I will consent to marry you!"
"Huh?" cried John Boller.
Mary, for the moment, said nothing at all. The intake of her breath was audible, though, and her color rose—not in embarrassment, plainly in anger. Mary's eyes snapped, too, and she leaned a little toward him questioningly, as if incredulous of her own hearing.
"You'll do what?" said Mary.
"I will consent to marry you!" Anthony repeated, and it seemed to him that his voice was coming hollowly and from a great distance, presumably from the caverns of a matrimony-infested Hades. "It will be simple—painfully simple. The ceremony can be performed this morning and in New Jersey. We will leave at once and without notifying either your friends or mine, on an extended wedding tour—I should say of six months' duration at the least," Anthony went on brokenly, while Johnson Boller gazed at him in pure fascination. "In a week or so we can write everywhere, giving the impression that it has been an elopement, the ceremony having been performed yesterday. Then——"
"Stop!" Mary cried. "Stop that—that planning!"
"Eh?"
The girl was sitting bolt upright, eyes snapping, and Anthony regarded her in astonishment. Also, she thumped the table with her small clenched fist as she looked straight at him and gasped: