But Guy Seton had forgotten all about his lightly spoken words, and was in no mood to be reminded.
“I think she must be mistaken, don’t you know!” he protested easily. “It’s always the same thing with youngsters of that age. If one is foolish enough to say a word, they leap to the conclusion that it is a definite arrangement. I’ve learnt that with my own nephews and nieces. I saw so very little of Miss Dreda before she went off to school that I could hardly have had time to promise.”
“I don’t think it took very much time. So far as I understand, it was on the afternoon when you first met—”
“The afternoon when I came over to call? I remember nothing whatever about that afternoon except that I saw you, for the first time, and that you were unkind to me, and wouldn’t speak.”
The blush on Rowena’s cheeks flamed up again more rosily than before.
“Don’t speak of it, please! It makes me hot and so furious with Maud even now. You are not a girl, so you can’t understand; but I was so wretchedly embarrassed, and angry, and ashamed.”
“But why? That’s what I could not understand! You had been sweet enough, and unselfish enough, and hospitable enough to go to the trouble of putting on a pretty frock—I adore that blue frock—for the benefit of a casual stranger whom you had never even seen. Why should you be ashamed of that? I think it was jolly unselfish. It’s such a fag changing one’s kit. You ought to have been very complacent and pleased. You would have been if you could have changed places with me for a minute, and seen yourself walking into the room. If you knew what I thought—”
He paused, and Rowena, scenting danger, resolved that nothing on earth would make her put the obvious question. The resolution lasted for a whole half-minute, at the end of which time a feeble little voice demanded softly:
“Wh–at did you think?”
“I thought—oh, Rowena! so many, many things! I thought that I had dreamt of you all my life, and had found you at last. I thought you were the loveliest thing in the whole wide world. I wished I had been a better man for your sake! I was so happy to have met you, and so miserable because you were cross. It was such a bad beginning that I was afraid you would always be prejudiced—always dislike me.”