“I know you think I ought to, and I suppose it will appear quite incomprehensible to you when I do not——”
“Why, Dolores, my dear girl! This is most amazing. Didn't Bill ask you to marry him before he left?”
“Yes, he did me that honour, and I declined him.”
“You what!”
She smiled at him so maternally that his hand itched to drag her down to him and kiss her curving lips.
“Do you mind telling me just why you took this extraordinary attitude?”
“You have no right to ask, but I'll tell you. I refused Billy because I didn't love him enough—that way. What's more, I never could.”
He rolled his head to one side and softly, very softly, whistled two bars of “The Spanish Cavalier” through his teeth He was properly thunder-struck—so much so, in fact, that for a moment he actually forgot her presence the while he pondered this most incredible state of affairs.
“I see it all now. It's as clear as mud,” he announced finally. “You refused poor old Bill and broke his heart, and so he went away and hasn't had the courage to write me since. I'm afraid Bill and I both regarded this fight as practically won—all over but the wedding-march, as one might put it. I might as well confess I hustled the boy down from the mine just so you two could get married and light out on your honeymoon I figured Bill could kill two birds with one stone—have his honeymoon and get rid of his malaria, and return here in three or four months to relieve me, after I had the mine in operation. Poor boy. That was a frightful song-and-dance you gave him.”
“I suspected you were the matchmaker in this case. I must say I think you're old enough to know better, Caliph John.”