“As everybody knows you are engaged to Mr. Farebrother,” continued Ethel, still smiling, and twisting off a twig of syringa that was at hand, “you can’t grudge me my good fortune.”
Grudge her her good fortune! And “everybody” knowing she was engaged to Farebrother, when she had not breathed a word of it outside her own family, albeit she had half her trousseau finished! Letty was so scandalized by Miss Maywood’s brazen assurance, as she regarded it, that she could only say, coldly:
“I do not understand how ‘everybody’ can know that I am engaged to Mr. Farebrother. Certainly I have never mentioned it, and I am sure that he hasn’t.”
“That’s only your odd Southern way,” answered Ethel, disapprovingly.
Curiosity got the better of Letty’s disgust, and she asked, “How long have you and my cousin been engaged?”
“Only to-day,” calmly replied Ethel. “Reggie brought the letter from the postoffice this morning, and I answered it at once. I also wrote to England, in order to catch the next steamer. Sir Archy is in New York, and won’t get my letter for two days perhaps. Reggie and Gladys and I have talked over the engagement a little this afternoon. I shall be married very quietly in the country—we have an uncle who is a clergyman, and he has a nice parish, and will be glad to have me married from the rectory—and Reggie and Gladys very sensibly don’t expect me to marry a baronet from their London lodgings. Sir Archy was very explicit in his letter about our future plans. He is willing to spend a month in London this season, but he has been away so much he feels it necessary to be at Fox Court in June—and he has taken a place in Scotland from the 12th of August.”
“But suppose you didn’t care to go to Scotland from the 12th of August? And suppose you wanted to spend more than a month in London?” asked Letty, much scandalized by these cut and dried proceedings.
“Of course I should not make the slightest objection to any of Sir Archy’s plans,” replied Ethel, wonderingly.
“And he must have assumed a good deal,” suddenly cried Letty, bursting out laughing.
“He only assumed that I would act as any other sensible girl would,” replied Ethel, calmly. “Sir Archy is a baronet of good family, suitable age, and excellent estate. What more could a girl—and a girl in my position—want?”