"I'm so sorry that I made you come up here first this morning when you were in a hurry to get to Cousin Charlotte's, Rob," said Wythie. "You know I thought Frances was going to town on the 1.53 train, but she went this morning, so I had to decide the curtains for myself and give her the sample. I took the autumn-tinted fabric. Basil says he is sure father would prefer it, and I want the room to be what he likes, although he won't be in it long, and nobody knows how soon he will get back here. Aren't you going to stay with me, or haven't you settled Cousin Peace's problem?"
"If you're going down to Miss Charlotte's I'll take you there safely, Rob. I've got to meet the doctor at the new family's, four doors below her," said Bruce rising.
Rob flushed; she had been long trying to avoid these solitary interviews with Bruce, and now Wythie had made it impossible for her to escape this walk without being downright rude. She arose with a reluctance that every muscle betrayed, and said: "I suppose I must go if you don't need me, Wythie. Cousin Peace is waiting for me; I told her I would hurry down as soon as I had seen your samples once more."
"Basil and I are going to drive over to the lake this afternoon; be ready by three, and tell Mardy," said Wythie nervously. Her experienced eye detected a look in Bruce's that spoke of determination, and in Rob's an expression of defiant fear.
She watched them off down the long walk under the heavy trees that shaded the approach to her new home, clasping and unclasping her hands in a panic of foreboding. It took all her strength of mind to keep her resolution not to disturb Basil during his working hours; she longed to rush to him and say what she could now say only to herself and the carved chair upon which she was kneeling by the window: "Oh, dear, oh dear! He is going to tell her he cares for her, and she is going to be horrid! Oh, Rob, how can you, when he is such a dear boy, and you know you will never look at any one else! it isn't like Prue. Oh, I wish Basil were here!"
Wythie's forecast was proving entirely correct. Bruce walked down to the gate without a word, and Rob kept at his side with a most forbidding expression on her face, which seemed to have had all its ripples and sunshine frozen in Wythie's library.
For a few paces down the street Bruce preserved this silence, then suddenly he halted, and turned on Rob fiercely. "Look here, Rob," he said. "You've been trying to keep out of my way, and I suppose you think I'll take that for my answer. But I won't! Are you going to marry me?"
"No, indeed I am not," retorted Rob with equal emphasis.