"When?" asks Lottie skeptically.
"To-morrow."
"Will there be 'chocolate-cream' and 'Turkish delight' in it?"
"There will—pounds of both!"
"Then she only said that you were a very nice eligible young man, that your property was worth two thousand five hundred pounds, and that you had been frightfully in love with her daughter Alice, Lady Something or Other, but that you were beginning to get over it now."
"It's a lie—a shameless, impudent lie, a most confounded lie!" cries the faithless Everard, striding quickly to Pauline's side, his face crimson with wrath. "Don't believe a word of it, Miss Lefroy—don't. I never cared a straw for Alice Crawford—never! A little, pale-faced, snub-nosed chit—she's the last girl in Nutshire I'd wish to marry! Say you don't believe it!"
"Who—who told you?" stammers Pauline, with flaming face, suddenly guessing the truth. "I know it was my sister."
She darts across to the curtains, seizes the culprit in a vicious grip, and leads her to the door, where she pauses to take breath and review her position.
Having come to the conclusion that she has tried her lover sufficiently, Miss Pauline takes another course, which is so soothing and satisfactory that in a very short space of time the clouds have disappeared from Everard's ruddy brow and he is in Paradise again.