"Did you know anything of this?" said Hallin, with that careful carelessness in which people dress a dubious question.
"Nothing," she said quietly.
Then an impulse not to be stood against, springing from very mingled depths of feeling, drove her on. She, too, put down the paper, and laying her finger-tips together on her knee she said with an odd slight laugh:
"But I was the last person to know. About a fortnight ago Mr. Wharton proposed to me."
Hallin sprang from his chair, almost with a shout. "And you refused him?"
She nodded, and then was angrily aware that, totally against her will or consent, and for the most foolish and remote reasons, those two eyes of hers had grown moist.
Hallin went straight over to her.
"Do you mind letting me shake hands with you?" he said, half ashamed of
his outburst, a dancing light of pleasure transforming the thin face.
"There—I am an idiot! We won't say a word more—except about Lady
Selina. Have you seen her?"
"Three or four times."
"What is she like?"