“A most awkward mistake,” suggested Meredith, with a cruel smile that made her wince.
“Mr. Oscard must have mistaken me altogether,” the girl went on, volubly addressing herself to Meredith—she wanted nothing from Oscard. “I may have been silly, perhaps, or merely ignorant and blind. How was I to know that he meant what he said?”
“How, indeed?” agreed Meredith, with a grave bow.
“Besides, he has no business to come here bringing false accusations against me. He has no right—it is cruel and ungentlemanly. He cannot prove anything; he cannot say that I ever distinctly gave him to understand—er, anything—that I ever promised to be engaged or anything like that.”
She turned upon Oscard, whose demeanour was stolid, almost dense. He looked very large and somewhat difficult to move.
“He has not attempted to do so yet,” suggested Jack suavely, looking at his friend.
“I do not see that it is quite a question of proofs,” said Oscard quietly, in a voice that did not sound like his at all. “We are not in a court of justice, where ladies like to settle these questions now. If we were I could challenge you to produce my letters. There is no doubt of my meaning in them.”
“There are also my poor contributions to—your collection,” chimed in Jack Meredith. “A comparison must have been interesting to you, by the same mail presumably, under the same postmark.”
“I made no comparison,” the girl cried defiantly. “There was no question of comparison.”
She said it shamelessly, and it hurt Meredith more than it hurt Guy Oscard, for whom the sting was intended.