True man as she knew him to be, his words rang false on Mona's sensitive ear. She rose slowly from her chair and stood before the fire.
"Nor am I a girl," she said, "not to know mine. It is no fault of mine, Mr Dickinson, that you did not take my answer two months ago. I can only repeat it now," and she turned to leave the room.
He felt keenly the injustice and justice of her anger; but he was too honest to complain of the first without pleading guilty to the second.
"Considering all that has passed between us," he said simply, "I think you might have said it less unkindly."
He was conscious of the weakness of the answer, but to her it was the strongest he could have made. It brought back the brotherly Sahib of former days, and her conscience smote her.
"Was I unkind?" she said, turning back. "Indeed, I did not mean to be; but I thought you were honest enough, and knew me well enough, to come and say you had made a mistake. I was hurt that you should think me so small." She hesitated. "Sahib," she said, "Doris and I have been friends ever since we were children, and no man has ever known both of us without preferring her. I can scarcely believe that any man will have the luck to win her, but I could not be jealous of Doris——"
She stopped short. At Christmas she could have said the words with perfect truth, but were they true now? The question flashed like lightning through her mind, and the Sahib watched her with intense interest while she answered it. Her face grew very pale, and her lips trembled. She leaned her arm against the mantelpiece.
"Sahib," she said, "life gets so complicated, and it is so difficult to tell what one is bound to say. You asked me if—if—there was somebody else. There is somebody else; there was then. I did not lie to you. I did not know. And even now—he—has not said——"
She broke off abruptly, and left the room.
The Sahib lifted up the book she had laid down, and carefully read the title-page again, without really seeing one word. The question had indeed been settled for him, and at that moment he would have given wellnigh everything he possessed, if he could have been the man to win and marry Mona Maclean.