“Oh, I can explain it fully. He meant nothing. He told me you didn’t care to make the girl’s acquaintance, and he somehow was ashamed of his infatuation with a girl not in his set. He went just to amuse himself at first, but directly she got him in her toils—as she did you—and he proposed, and, of course, was snapped up directly. I was sorry enough, I assure you, for I don’t like the match. She may be in love with Royall, or she may be taking him for his money. They say in the town she’s the most arrant little flirt alive.”
“A true bill,” he commented shortly.
“Yes; and this is what I wished to say to you. She begged me to—intercede with you.”
“With me?” and the hot blood rushed to his temples.
“Yes. Wasn’t it a piece of impudence? But she got around me with that winning way of hers that makes fools of all the men—and some of the women, too—and I promised to keep her secret myself, and to beg you.”
“Her secret?”
“Yes; that she flirted with you. She’s afraid for Royall to find out lest he break the engagement. And she cried, and vowed she loved him truly, though I fear it’s just his money. She said: ‘Oh, Mrs. Fleming, no one knows it but you and Mr. Bain. Don’t betray me to dear Royall, please don’t; and ask him—Mr. Bain, that dear, impetuous fellow—not to tell of me. I did wrong, I know; but he was so much in earnest, and I was only having a little fun. And Mr. Bain owes me something for causing me that accident yesterday.’”
His great eyes flashed with contempt, and he cried hotly:
“Very well, then. I will pay my debt by silence. Tell her she need not fear that I shall betray her to Royall. I am as much ashamed of that affair as she is, and I wish I could say, as she does, that I was only having a little fun. But I was in earnest, as she knows, and so—I must suffer,” bitterly.
“But you must not learn to despise true, loving women for the sake of one false coquette,” she murmured, and just then dinner was ceremoniously announced.