“She did. She asked me to be her tool for one evening, having got into a scrape with a hot-headed Irishman and a woolly-lamb Englishman. Since, almost as long as I can remember, I have been at Gwendoline’s beck and call, I was perfectly willing. I presume the hot-headed Irishman was your friend Captain O’Connor.”
For some minutes Paddy was struck dumb. It had never entered her head to question the engagement, and she had not mentioned it to Doreen because it was such a sore subject. Hastily reviewing the past year, however, she could not but see that, on the whole, the news, though incorrect, had been most beneficial to Eileen. Undoubtedly, from the time she learnt of Lawrence’s supposed engagement, she had been better able to pull herself together and set steadily about forgetting him. Only this could not, to a girl like Paddy, in any measure abate what had gone. For every tear Lawrence’s heartlessness had made her sister shed, she felt she had an undying grudge against him, and she would not forget. Presently, to break the silence, she remarked:
“I don’t know how you can help falling in love with Miss Carew. Why aren’t you engaged to her?”
“Well, one very good reason, perhaps, is the fact that she is practically engaged to someone else.”
“Is she?” with ill-concealed eagerness. “Who is he!”
“Unfortunately he happens to be a younger son, which is a heinous and not easily-overcome offence in her mother’s eyes, and hence the delay.”
“What a pity! Is he nice?”
“One of the nicest chaps I ever met.”
“Oh, I do hope it will come out right in the end.”
“There is not much doubt. Gwen has her father on her side, and I think it is chiefly a question of time with the mother. But, for the matter of that, Gwen always gets her own way in the end. Her mother arranged for her to be a countess eighteen months ago, but at the last moment she advised the earl not to propose to her, and sent him flying.”