Miss Wollaston had drifted away from them (occupied, as she so often was when there were no persons present in the formal status of guests, in making minute readjustments of pillows and things as a sort of standing protest against the demon of disorder), and having noted this fact he went on:
"I didn't come for the picnic tea you invited me to the other day. If I'd known how the land lay, I shouldn't have sent a substitute. I'm afraid, perhaps, that was rather—tactless of me."
He saw the queerest look come into her face,—enough in itself to startle him rather though it wasn't without a gleam of humor.
"I was just wondering," she explained, "whether if you had come that particular day, I mightn't be engaged to you now instead of to Tony."
Unluckily Lucile heard that and froze rigid for a moment with horror. Then recovering her motor faculties, she moved in a stately manner toward the door.
"I think if you will excuse me," she said, "I'll go up and prepare for luncheon."
Mary gazed conscience-stricken from her to Wallace who was blushing like a boy caught stealing apples. "I'm sorry," she gasped, but not quickly enough for the apology to overtake her aunt. "It's terrible of me to say things like that and I do, every now and then. Can you bear with me until I've had time to quiet down? It's all so new, to be happy like this, I'm a little—wild with it."
In his nice neutral unexaggerated way he told her that her happiness could never be anything but a joy to him; and after that, when they were seated side by side upon the cane davenport he asked about her plans; when they were going to be married, where they meant to live, and so on.
"Why, we'll be married, I suppose," she said, "at the end of the customary six weeks' engagement. There isn't a thing to wait for, really."
"I'm glad of that," he remarked.