"Oh, ... I should like to come...." She was a little breathless.
"Good! I will call for you then, at seven, and we will dine together. Au revoir."
"He swept her a mocking bow and was gone," Peter murmured to himself.
Then he looked at Rhoda, and found her eyes upon his face, wide, frightened, bewildered, and knew in a flash that she had never meant to consent to go out with Vyvian, that she had been caught by the old power he had over her and swept off her feet. That knowledge gave him confidence, and he could say, "You don't want to go, do you? Let me go after him and tell him."
"Oh," she pressed her hands together in front of her. "But I must go—I said I would."
Peter was on his feet and out of the door in a second. He saw Vyvian in the passage downstairs, putting on his coat. He spoke from half-way down the stairs:
"Oh, Miss Johnson asks me to say she is sorry she can't go with you to-morrow night after all; she finds she has another engagement."
Vyvian turned and looked up at him, a slight smile lifting his lip.
"Really?" was all he said. "All the same, I think I will call at seven and try to persuade her to change her mind again. Good night."
As plainly as possible he had said to Peter, "I believe you to be lying." Peter had no particular objection to his believing that; he was not proud; but he did object to his calling at seven and trying to persuade Rhoda to change her mind again, for he believed that that would be a task easy of achievement.