"Thank her for me," returned Quarren, level-eyed and very white.
"Which means?" insisted Sir Charles quietly.
"Absolutely nothing," said Quarren in a voice which makes enemies.
The following day Sir Charles left for Newport where Mrs. Sprowl had opened "Skyland," her villa of pink Tennessee marble, to a lively party of young people of which Strelsa Leeds made one. And once more, according to the newspapers, her engagement to Sir Charles was expected to be announced at any moment.
When Quarren picked up the newspapers from his office desk next morning he found the whole story there—a story to which he had become accustomed.
But the next day, the papers repeated the news. And it remained, for the first time, uncontradicted by anybody. All that morning he sat at his desk staring at her picture, reproduced in half-tones on the first page of every newspaper in town—stared at it, and at the neighbouring likeness of Sir Charles in the uniform of his late regiment; read once more of Strelsa's first marriage with all its sequence of misery and degradation; read fulsome columns celebrating her beauty, her popularity, her expected engagement to one of the wealthiest Englishmen in the world.
"Once more, according to the newspapers, her engagement to Sir Charles was expected to be announced."