Thrush Hill, May 6, 18—.
Well, it did decide it, but not exactly in the way I anticipated. I can look back on the whole affair quite calmly now, but I wouldn't live it over again for all the wealth of Ind.
That day when Gus Sinclair came I was all ready for him. I had put on my very prettiest new gown to do honour to the occasion, and Alicia smilingly assured me I was looking very well.
"And so cool and composed. Will you be able to keep that up? Don't you really feel a little nervous, Katherine?"
"Not in the least," I said. "I suppose I ought to be, according to traditions, but I never felt less flustered in my life."
When Bessie brought up Gus Sinclair's card Alicia dropped a pecky little kiss on my cheek, and pushed me toward the door. I went down calmly, although I'll admit that my heart was beating wildly. Gus Sinclair was plainly nervous, but I was composed enough for both. You would really have thought that I was in the habit of being proposed to by a millionaire every day.
"I suppose you know what I have come to say," he said, standing before me, as I leaned gracefully back in a big chair, having taken care that the folds of my dress fell just as they should.
And then he proceeded to say it in a rather jumbled-up fashion, but very sincerely.
I remember thinking at the time that he must have composed the speech in his head the night before, and rehearsed it several times, but was forgetting it in spots.
When he ended with the self-same question that Jack had asked me three months before at Thrush Hill he stopped and took my hands.