“He had not.”
“What! not when he asked you if you’d have diamonds or emeralds?”
“He wouldn’t be likely to be so silly, and if you can’t talk sense, Basil Adair, for heaven’s sake don’t talk at all.”
Basil laughed outright then with great enjoyment.
“It’s such fun to tease you, Paddy,” he said. “You do get so deliriously wild about nothing. Good-night,” as they reached her door. “Don’t fling the plates about when you get in, it’s such an expensive amusement,” and he went off down the road.
All evening Paddy remained moody and preoccupied, revolving in her mind how to tell Eileen about Lawrence. In the end she waited until bed-time, and they were alone. She then began a long rigmarole about the extraordinariness of coincidence, which made Eileen look at her with wonderment, and question in her own mind if she had a bad headache or anything. Paddy noticed it, but held on until she was hopelessly and inextricably mixed up, and then, after all her fine preparation, she suddenly blurted out:
“Lawrence Blake is engaged. I heard it from a friend of his this afternoon.”
Eileen turned deathly white and gripped a table near her. She looked as if she were going to faint.
“Oh, Eily! don’t look like that!” cried poor Paddy. “What a blundering idiot I am. Oh! don’t take it to heart dreadfully—he isn’t worth it—really, really, he isn’t.”
It was too late for Eileen to prevaricate, so she just sat down and leaned her face in her hands and said, “Tell me about it.”