Avery looked at him very steadily through the falling dusk. She had a feeling that he was trying to hoodwink her by some means not wholly praiseworthy.
"Are you engaged?" she asked him, point-blank.
He made a careless gesture. "Everybody says so."
"Are you engaged?" Avery repeated with resolution.
She freed her hand as she uttered the question the second time. She was standing up very straight against the churchyard wall sternly determined to check all trifling.
Piers straightened himself also. From the pride of his attitude she thought that he was about to take offence, but his voice held none as he made reply.
"I am not."
She felt as if some constriction at her heart, of which till that moment she had scarcely been aware, had suddenly slackened. She drew a long, deep breath.
"Sorry, what?" suggested Piers.
He began to tap a careless tattoo with his whip on the toe of his boot. He did not appear to be regarding her very closely. Yet she did not feel at her ease. That sudden sense as of strain relaxed had left her curiously unsteady.