“I can’t tell you.”
“You didn’t ask?”
“On the contrary I stopped him off.”
“Oh then,” Mrs. Brook exclaimed, “that’s what I call declining.”
The words appeared for an instant to strike her companion. “Is it? Is it?” he almost musingly repeated. But he shook himself the next moment free of his wonder, was more what would have been called in Buckingham Crescent on the spot. “Isn’t there rather something in my having thus thought it my duty to warn you that I’m definitely his candidate?”
Mrs. Brook turned impatiently away. “You’ve certainly—with your talk about ‘warning’—the happiest expressions!” She put her face into the flowers as he had done just before; then as she raised it: “What kind of a monster are you trying to make me out?”
“My dear lady”—Vanderbank was prompt—“I really don’t think I say anything but what’s fair. Isn’t it just my loyalty to you in fact that has in this case positively strained my discretion?”
She shook her head in mere mild despair. “‘Loyalty’ again is exquisite. The tact of men has a charm quite its own. And you’re rather good,” she continued, “as men go.”
His laugh was now a little awkward, as if she had already succeeded in making him uncomfortable. “I always become aware with you sooner or later that they don’t go at all—in your sense: but how am I, after all, so far out if you HAVE put your money on another man?”
“You keep coming back to that?” she wearily sighed.