Was there one person to whom he told the truth before he went? Did the girl behind the counter hear the manner in which the engagement was broken? Ah, none of us will ever know that! But, although I could not, without the highest impropriety, have spoken to any of the old ladies about this business, unless they had chosen to speak to me—and somehow I feel that after the abrupt close of it not even Mrs. Gregory St. Michael would have been likely to touch on the subject with an outsider—there was nothing whatever to forbid my indulging in a skirmish with Eliza La Heu; therefore I lunched at the Exchange on my last day.
“To the mountains?” she said, in reply to my information about my plans of travel.
“Doctor Beaugarcon says nothing else can so quickly restore me.”
“Stay there for the rhododendrons, then,” she bade me. “No sight more beautiful in all the South.”
“Town seems deserted,” I pursued. “Everybody gone.”
“Oh, not everybody!”
“All the interesting people.”
“Thank you.”
“I meant, interesting to you.”
I saw her decide not to be angry; and her decision changed and saved our conversation from the trashy, bantering tone which it was taking, and brought it to a pass most unexpected to both of us.