'Oh,' said Mary coldly; and at once Rob felt a chill pass through him. It was true, after all, that Miss Abinger could be an icicle on occasion.
Rob, having told a lie, deserved no mercy, and got none. The pity of it is that Mary might have thawed a little had she known that it was only a lie. She thought that Rob was not aware of his loss. A man taking fickleness as the comparative degree of an untruth is perhaps only what may be looked for, but one does not expect it from a woman. Probably the lights had blinded Mary.
Rob had still an opportunity of righting himself, but he did not take it.
'Then you did mean the card for me,' he said, in foolish exultation; 'when I found it on the walk I was not certain that you had not merely dropped it by accident.'
Alas! for the fatuity of man. Mary looked up in icy surprise.
'What card?' she said. 'I don't know what you are talking about.'
'Don't you remember?' asked Rob, very much requiring to be sharpened again.
He looked so woebegone, that Mary nearly had pity on him. She knew, however, that if it was not for her sex, men would never learn anything.
'No,' she replied, and turned to talk to Sir Clement.
Rob walked home from the Langham that night with Dick, and, when he was not thinking of the two Sir Clements, he was telling himself that he had climbed his hill valiantly, only to topple over when he neared the top. Before he went to bed he had an article to finish for the Wire, and, while he wrote, he pondered over the ways of women; which, when you come to think of it, is a droll thing to do.