Red as a Rose is She: A Novel

by Rhoda Broughton

"Yes."

"I thought you always had such a horror of long engagements?"

"So I have, but—but" (involuntarily lowering his voice, and lifting "Thou Fool!" to be a partial shade for his face)—"there is no engagement between us now!"

Six startled eyes fix themselves upon his face. "What!" cry three simultaneously shrill female voices. "No engagement! Has she thrown you over?"

"No."

"Have you thrown her over?" (with an astonished emphasis on the pronouns).

"No."

"Have you quarrelled, then?" "No, we haven't," answers Bob, wincing. "Poor little child! one would hardly choose such a time as this to quarrel with her. Cannot you understand two people coming to the conclusion that they are better apart; better as friends than as—as anything else?"

His three comforters stare at one another in bewilderment; then his parent speaks, shaking her head oracularly:

"I'm afraid I see how it is, Bob; you have found out that this unfortunate girl is, in some way, unworthy of you, and you are too generous to confess it, even to us."