“Where is Mabel?” she asked, anxiously.
“She is having her hair done and her nails polished, I believe,” said Decatur, gloomily, dropping down beside Jane. “She is being prepared, as nearly as I can gather, to receive a proposal of marriage.”
“Ah! Then you—” She turned to him inquiringly.
“It appears so now,” he admitted. “I have been talking to her mother.”
“Oh, I see.” She said it quietly, gently, in a tone of submission.
“But you don't see,” he protested. “No one sees; that is, no one sees things as they really are. Do you think, Jane, that you could listen to me for a few moments without jumping at conclusions, without assuming that you know exactly what I am going to say before I have said it?”
She said that she would try.
“Then I would like to make a confession to you.”
“Wouldn't it be better to—to make it first to Mabel?”
“No, it would not,” he declared, doggedly. “It concerns that interview in which I was quoted as saying things about gray-eyed girls.”