A pause. Roger has forgotten the partridges. He is sunk in reflection.
"Was there ever any talk of this before?" he says, presently, with a hesitating and doubtful accent, and an altogether staggered look. "Had you any reason—any ground for thinking that he cared about her?"
"Great ground," reply I, touching my cheeks with the tips of my fingers, and feeling, with a sense of self-gratulation, that their temperature is gradually, if slowly, lowering, "every ground—at one time!"
"At what time!"
"In the autumn," say I, slowly; my mind reluctantly straying back to the season of my urgent invitations, of my pressing friendlinesses, "and at Christmas, and after Christmas."
"Yes?" (with a quick eagerness, as if expecting to hear more).
"The boys," continue I, speaking without any ease or fluency, for the subject is always one irksome and difficult to me, "the boys took it quite for granted—looked upon it as a certain thing that he meant seriously until—"
"Until what?" (almost snatching the words out of my mouth).
"Until—well!" (with a short, forced laugh), "until they found that he did not."
"And—do you know?—but of course you do—can you tell me how they discovered that?"