"To-morrow evening!" said the lady slowly. "I am very sorry, I have an engagement; I shall not be at home to-morrow evening."
Why did it not occur to Mrs. Busby to say that she would leave the address for him, if he would call for it? Mr. Southwode quietly put up his pencil, and remarked that another time would do; and passed on easily to make inquiries about what New York had been doing since he went away? Mrs. Busby told him of certain buildings and plans for buildings here and there, and then suddenly asked,
"When did you come, Mr. Southwode?"
"I landed to-day."
"To-day! Rotha would be very much flattered if she knew how prompt you have been to seek her out."
It was said with a manner meant to be smoothly insinuating, but which somehow had missed the smoothness. Mrs. Busby for that moment had lost the hold she usually kept of herself.
"Rotha would expect no less of me," Mr. Southwode answered calmly.
"Then you and she must have been great friends before you went away? greater then I knew."
"Did Rotha not credit me with so much?" he asked with a smile, which covered a sharp observation of the lady, examining him.
"To tell you the truth," said Mrs. Busby, with a manner which was intended to be gracious, "I did not encourage her. Knowing what gentlemen, and young gentlemen, generally are, I thought it unlikely that you would much remember Rotha amid the pressure of your business in England, and very likely that things might turn out so that she would never see you again. I expected every day to hear that you were married; and of course that would have been an end of your interest in her."