"Not to you, perhaps," he said, "but to me. I have seen nothing of you for so long," he added, rather piteously.
"There has been nothing that I am aware of to prevent your seeing me," I said. "If Mr. Henderson chooses to make himself strange to his friends it is his own affair." He looked confused and murmured something about "many engagements and business."
"Mr. Henderson, you will excuse me," said I, resolved not to have this sort of thing go on any longer. "You have always been treated at our house as an intimate and valued friend; of late you seem to prefer to act like a ceremonious stranger."
"Indeed, you mistake me, entirely, Miss Van Arsdel," he said, eagerly. "You must know my feelings; you must appreciate my reasons; you see why I cannot and ought not."
"I am quite in the dark as to both," I said. "I cannot see any reason why we should not be on the old footing, I am sure. You have acted of late as if you were afraid to meet me; it is all perfectly unaccountable to me. Why should you do so? What reason can there be?"
"Because," he said, with a sort of desperation, "because I love you, Miss Van Arsdel. Because I always shall love you too well to associate with you as the wife or betrothed bride of another man."
"There is no occasion you should, Mr. Henderson. I am not, so far as I understand, either wife or betrothed to any man," I said.
He looked perfectly thunderstruck.
"Yet I heard it from the best authority."
"From what authority?" said I, "for I deny it."