"I have not said that she is ugly," Harry growls.
"But you do not like her!" Lato now rivets his eyes full upon the gloomy face of his former playmate.
Harry turns away his head.
"I did not say I did not like her," he bursts out, "but I can't talk of her, because--because it is all her fault!"
"What is 'all'?" asks Lato, still looking fixedly at his friend.
Harry frowns and says nothing.
Lato does not speak again for a few moments. Then, having lighted a fresh cigar, he begins: "I always fancied,--one so often arranges in imagination a friend's future for him, particularly when one's own fate is fixed past recall,--I always said to myself that you and your cousin would surely come together. I liked to think that it would be so. To speak frankly, your betrothal to Paula was a great surprise to me."
"Indeed? Well, so it was to me!" Harry blurts out, then turns very red, is ashamed of his unbecoming confession; and then--then he is glad that it has been extorted from him; glad that he can speak frankly about the affair to any one with whom he can take counsel.
Treurenberg draws a long breath, and then whistles softly to himself.
"Sets the wind in that quarter?" he says at last. "I thought so. I determined that you should show your colours. And may I ask how you ever got into such a confounded scrape?"