“Oh, I don’t know,” he replied. “I’m not keen on it and there are loads of men.”
Miss Pinckney had watched him talking to Frances Rhett and she had drawn her own deductions, but she said nothing. He sat down beside her. He had been wanting to tell her of his engagement for a long time past, but had put it off and put it off, waiting for the psychological moment. Maria Pinckney was a very difficult person to fit into a psychological moment.
“I want to tell you something,” said he. “I’m engaged to Frances Rhett.”
“Engaged to be married to her?”
“Yes.”
Miss Pinckney was dumb.
What she had always dreaded had come to pass, then.
“You don’t congratulate me?”
“No,” she replied. “I don’t.”
Then, all of a sudden, she turned on him.