Hal stood at her window, and glanced out over the City, and felt renewed in her determination to withstand Sir Edwin Crathie’s advances. She knew that he was treating her with a lack of respect he would not have dared to show a woman in his own circle.
He was treating her as a City typist; and however much she wished to prolong it, she knew she owed it to herself to cut it adrift.
And the next day, when the anticipated telephone call came, her resolution was firm and unshaken.
“Tell the gentleman I am engaged,” she told the call boy.
He came back again a moment later to know what time she would be disengaged, and she gave the message: “It is quite impossible to say. I have some most important work on hand.”
The small boy grinned in a way that made Hal long to box his ears, but she returned to her work, and pretended not to see.
At the other end of the wire the speaker sat back in his chair and muttered an oath; then for some moments he stared gloomily at his desk.
“Damn it! I like her pluck,” ran his thoughts; “but I don’t mean to be put off like that. I’ve got to see her again somehow, if it’s only to prove I’m not the cad she thinks me.”
CHAPTER XXIII
The following afternoon when Hal left the office about half-past four she saw a motor she recognised a little way down the street, and was almost immediately accosted by Sir Edwin himself.