"Why, I was so sure you were in love with her, I used to give you chances to be together. Do you remember that afternoon you went to say good-by to her, before you went to the Philippines? I stayed up-stairs to give you a chance to ask her."
"Laura!"
"I did."
"How could you be so absurd?"
"Everybody thought so."
That silenced him. He was horribly ashamed. It was his fault, then, that night in the cottage? "Everybody thought so." So, naturally, Fred thought so—and she was the noblest and most generous woman in the world! "It's my fault somehow, that she spoke," he told himself, in a passion of humiliation.
That night he wrote to her. The engagement was not to "come out" for two or three weeks;—"only the family must know," Laura said; but Howard had protested: "Fred—let's tell Fred?"
"Well," Laura consented, reluctantly, "I'll go and see her to-morrow morning and make her swear not to tell."
"She can keep a secret," he said. He did not add that Fred should learn the secret before to-morrow morning. "I'm the one to break it to her," he thought. Then mentally kicked himself for saying "break it."