“You know father refused to let me marry Captain Arbuthnot?”
She paused.
“You want me to plead for you, little Phyllis, I suppose?” he said.
“I am married,” she answered tragically. “That’s it! and now I’ve told you.”
Barrimore looked grave enough now.
“I would not have believed this of Arbuthnot,” was what he said. “When did this happen?”
“The day before yesterday, early in the morning, at St. Clement’s Church. Charlie got a special license. I came back to breakfast as usual.”
She looked very appealing and very childish in her simple white frock, Barrimore thought, and very sweet too. But he was angry with her, all the same. She was twenty-one, though she only looked sixteen.
Phyllis was quick to note the change in the young man’s tone.
“Now look here!” she said. “Father would not consent even to an engagement. Charlie and I love one another, and he was told he had to go right off to India. He sailed yesterday” (there was a catch in her voice here)—“some outbreak among natives in some hole-and-corner place, and Charlie knew the language, and that was why he was sent. Now, what could we do but make sure of each other? It wasn’t all roses to part at the church door, was it? And we don’t know in the very least when we shall meet again.”