Slowly Louie sat up. She turned, as if, like Buck, she had been deaf on one side. "Who?" she asked.
"Yes. To Mr. Jeffries. Since early in March. You remember he told Archie there was somebody?—and," Kitty became suddenly voluble, "I couldn't believe my ears at first. I'd never dreamed—never dreamed. And after I'd been such a beast—I don't mean a beast exactly, but getting at him, you know. I was just as bad as the others—about his baths and all that. Oh, I did feel ashamed—as mean as mean—oh!" She choked a little. "I don't mind saying it now, but I'd—I'd begun to be afraid I should never get off!"
"Yes—no, I mean," Louie murmured, dazed.
"Just fancy, it's being me! That night, when he asked me, I thought I should have gone clean off it. Sometimes I can hardly believe it yet. I hadn't a notion—not a notion! And it makes everything perfectly wonderful, knowing a man's so struck on you, though he is quiet and don't say much about it. Of course they mean all the more, that sort. We walk along the streets, but he won't let me stop out late for fear of tiring me, and he always takes me right to the door, and I'm trying hard not to be selfish, but it makes me so sorry for other girls who haven't got off—and perhaps if I sell some of my shares to start us with we can get married next year—if he gets a permanency, that is."
Louie was still thunderstruck. Mr. Jeffries engaged to—Kitty Windus! That unnamed personage was—Kitty Windus! She, Louie, was asked to believe that, in the face of all she had seen!
"I am glad," she found herself murmuring again.
"Did you guess?" Kitty asked eagerly. She would have given her ears to be told that somebody else had guessed.
"No," Louie replied, and added, seeing Kitty's fallen face: "I should have thought Mr. Merridew. You seemed such great friends."
At that Kitty broke in: "Poor Archie! I said it made one selfish.... His father's very ill. We were going on Putney Heath to-day, all four of us, Archie and Evie and Jeff and me; but Archie had a wire to go home this morning, poor Archie, and so I'm going to meet the others by-and-by. But anyway, if anything does happen, he'll be able to get married as soon as he likes—he's an only son."
At this Louie was even more startled. Mr. Jeffries and the Soames girl together at that moment! She remembered those irrevocable looks.