"Then you doubt me?"
Mrs. Perage looked at him with a softer eye, and remembered how she had been prepared to stand by him whatever was said. She had declared as much to Jim Vane, and could do nothing else but fulfil her declaration. "Perhaps you have some excuse, young man?" she said truculently.
"I have no excuse, but I have an explanation," said Hench dryly.
"Then you did propose to that other girl!" shrieked Mrs. Perage furiously.
"Yes. I told you that I----"
"You didn't; you didn't." Mrs. Perage would not give him time to finish his remark. "You told me that you admired another girl, but that she loved some one else, so you went away. Pfui! Do you think that my memory has gone with age?"
"What you say is quite true----"
"That my memory has gone with age?" demanded the old lady acidly.
"No! No! No! But your recollection of what I said about my former----"
"Love-affairs!" interpolated Mrs. Perage, who declined to be suppressed.