“I think them indiscreet,” she answered. “You wouldn’t feel very happy for instance if I laid claim to the honour.”
It never occurred to him to treat this speech seriously. He laughed as though it were a huge joke.
“I’m not such a fool as I look,” he said. “It was because I knew it was safe that I spoke so unguardedly to you.”
Later on in the evening he had cause to remember his indiscretion and to regret it. He noticed her with Edward Morgan, and observed with amazement the intimacy of the terms that held between them. It flashed into his mind with disconcerting conviction that what he had believed to be a joke was no jest after all. He had seen Mr Morgan speak to no one else, dance with no other partner. He pushed his inquiries further, and learned to his ever-increasing discomfiture that it was to Mr Morgan’s fiancée he had made his unguarded remarks.
Chapter Twenty Eight.
That night Prudence asked Edward Morgan for her release. The dance to which she had looked forward so gladly, and which she had not enjoyed, had galvanised her into a fixed determination to secure her freedom while yet there was time. The thought of marriage with a man so much older than herself, with whom she had nothing in common, whose every wish opposed itself in gentle opposition to her own, had become a nightmare to her. Young eyes had looked into her eyes that night with a wondering question in them that had hurt her. The hunger for young companionship gripped her. Her memory echoed the careless inconsequent chatter, the joyous laughter of irresponsible youth. One laugh in particular, an amused incredulous laugh, rang in her ears like a reproach.
Why had she committed this folly? She must draw back before it was too late.
With manifest nervousness Prudence made her faltering appeal for release from her engagement during the homeward drive. Mr Morgan was amazed. He keenly resented her lack of consideration for himself in wishing to withdraw her promise after the publicity given to their engagement. She shrank back from the cold anger in his eyes and the hardness of his voice when he answered her.