“If it hadn’t been? You mean if it hadn’t been—for Jack!”
CHAPTER XIV
SHE raised her eyes and looked at him full and frankly.
“Yes,” she said simply, and there was a thrill of pain in her gentle voice. “I should have put that first. If it hadn’t been for Jack!”
And now the criss-cross pattern of the Philosopher’s awkward temperament began to urge itself into prominence. He made a feeble effort to assume a patience which he did not possess, and only succeeded in pricking up the ugly little lines of satire which ran through his nature as the veins run through a leaf. He gave a short cough and a sniff in one.
“I thought as much!” he remarked. “And I wondered why you didn’t mention it at once. However—now you have mentioned it, may I, dare I ask whether you were engaged to that ‘missing’ young man?”
She kept her eyes steadily fixed upon him.
“No. I was not engaged.”
“Not engaged? Then—pardon me!—but why should his ghost stand in the way?”
A little tremor seemed to pass over her like a cold wind.