Miss Kent spoke hastily. "Oh, that was only part of your dreaming. Fainting people often have such fancies."
"Very likely," Forbes agreed. "You see, I don't know much about fainting. It never happened to me but once before." He turned his head on his damp pillow and lapsed into silence. It was the part of discretion, perhaps, to leave Miss Kent under the impression that the kiss was an illusion, due to his semi-conscious state, but he knew better. It was as real as music, or flame, or electricity. It had certain characteristics of all three.
It must have been Hephzibah.
CONGRATULATIONS ARE IN ORDER
Murray Prendergast had proposed. The summer sport had become dead earnest. Julia wrote Forbes the full details, explaining that the young man was awaiting her answer, and that she had asked two weeks in which to come to a decision. Apparently Julia, like Miss Finch, felt that to refuse Prendergast would be flying in the face of Providence, even though accepting him seemed a harsh necessity.
"'It's not what you and I dreamed of in the dear old days,'" wrote Julia. "'Oh, Burton, how far away those happy times seem when we sat hand in hand and planned our future. How merciless life is, Burton! Is there some dark fate in whose hands we are only puppets?'"
Agatha broke off in her reading to lift a scarlet face. "Must I go on with this?"