"This week? My own engagement? Richard, what do you mean?"
"I mean just this, my poor little girl," he began, his deep gray eyes full of tears, and his hands, as they held mine, trembling piteously, "—that if the story gets noised abroad that I—I hate even to suggest such a thing, Ann, it is so far from truth, darling—but if the story gets noised abroad that I jilted you it will harm my prospects, as well as being a humiliation to you."
"Oh, I see."
"So I thought you might announce your engagement to some one else—of course, just for a pose, but—"
"But there isn't any one else."
His eyes glanced into mine for a moment, then sought the floor.
"I've thought of all that," he said easily. "But you know that Alfred Morgan would—would—"
"Would let me use his name?"
"Oh, Ann, don't look so queer and unnatural, dear; you frighten me! You're not going to faint, nor—anything, are you?" he began, looking around helplessly.
"I'm not going to faint," I assured him with a little smile that was forced up from somewhere in the depths of my misery. "But I'm not going to use Alfred's—nor any other man's name in the way you suggest."