"Yes, sir," she answered simply.
"Then sit down in that chair and take this watch of mine in your hand and don't say one single, solitary, lonely word for five minutes. No matter what happens: no matter what anyone says or does. Will you promise?"
"Yes, sir," she answered again.
"Well then," he began, "I know another man who wants you—this stage idea is not the only way out of the store. Remember you're not to speak—this other man wants to marry you."
A scarlet flush sprang to Mary's face and slowly ebbed away again leaving her deadly pale. She kept her word in letter but hardly in spirit for she looked at him through tear-filled eyes, and shook her head.
"Of course you can't be expected to take to the idea just at first," said he, as if she had spoken, "but I want you to think it over. The man is a well-off, gentlemanly sort of chap. Miles too old for you of course—for you're not twenty and he's nearly forty—but I think he would make you happy. I know he'd try with all the strength that's in him."
Blank incredulity was on Mary's face. She glanced at the watch and up at him and again she shook her head.
"This man," Burgess went on, "is a friend of Miss Masters and it was through her that he first heard of the Lady Hyacinths. He was an idler then. A shiftless, worthless loafer, but the Lady Hyacinths made a man of him and he's gone out and got a job."
Comprehension overwhelming, overmastering, flashed into Mary's eyes. But her promise held her silent and in her chair. Again it was as though she had spoken.
"Yes, I see you understand—you probably think of me as an old man past the time of love and yet I love you."