The girls eyed each other. Tiddy had to admit that Cicely was awake—wide awake. Something sparkled in her eyes which Tiddy recognised with astonishment as determination—something, too, not absolutely unfamiliar. Ah, she had it. Cicely was looking at her with exactly the same expression that informed the portrait of her father—a portrait acclaimed by Lady Selina as a “speaking” likeness. A banal phrase now invested with new significance. Arthur Wilverley, describing the late Henry Chandos to Miss Tiddle, had said: “I never saw the old boy funk an ugly fence if his hounds were on the other side of it.”
“I shall break off this engagement,” said Cicely.
“Cis!”
“Nothing else is possible.”
“Well, I must say you are wonderful—wonderful!”
“I must be—decent. I loathe indecency. I suppose I looked—peeped—at this marriage through drawn blinds. You have pulled them up. And I’m much obliged to you.”
“You—you forgive me, Cis? I know that I rampaged like—like a factory girl.”
“You did, thank God!”
Solemnly they kissed. Once more Miss Tiddle, not Cicely, wiped away two trickling tears. Cicely, as tranquilly as before, said:
“Nothing remains but to think out, if we can, the easiest way of breaking this to mother and—and Arthur.”