'Don't you think so?' he urged.
'Well it all depends. I know nothing about why the match was broken off, beyond that paragraph in the paper that said it was her doing, and Dorothy has never alluded to it when we have been together. It depends, I should think, whether he cared very much for her. I suppose he did. It seems to me that everyone must love Dorothy Hawtrey. If so he may think it worth trying whether he cannot bring it on again.'
Captain Armstrong muttered something between his lips that she did not catch.
'I am almost sure you are swearing, Captain Armstrong, and that is very bad manners. Still I don't say that I shouldn't swear if I were a man and all this happened, so I forgive you.'
'We have had such a pleasant time,' he said ruefully, 'and if this fellow is going to stay here I can see it is all going to be spoilt.'
'I don't see why it should be spoilt. At any rate I am sure that if Dorothy broke off the match, she is not the sort of girl to make it up again. It must be an awful thing to break off an engagement when everyone is aware of it, and you know it will set everyone talking. I don't think I could ever bring myself to do it. I think Dorothy has put it quite aside; I have seen so much of her in the last fortnight, and if there had been anything on her mind I should have noticed it.'
'She coloured up when they met.'
'Of course she coloured up. You don't suppose, Captain Armstrong, a girl can suddenly meet a man she has been engaged to and has been fond of—for of course she was fond of him—and who has been acting as lover to her for weeks, and all that sort of thing, without the colour coming into her cheeks. It did not last a moment either. It just came and went. I am sure if it had been me, even if I had ceased to care for him, my cheeks would have flared up, and I should have been hot and uncomfortable for hours afterwards.'
'I should not think he was ever very lover-like,' Captain Armstrong said, savagely; 'I don't think he has got it in him.'
'I don't know,' Ada said, demurely. 'I have never been engaged, Captain Armstrong; so I can't say what men do under such circumstances. I believe—I suppose that they do take what novelists call a chaste salute sometimes. Now, if you swear like that, Captain Armstrong, I shall sit between papa and mamma at the next meal. It is downright scandalous!'