“Didn't you know we were engaged?” asked the girl, with childlike simplicity and astonishment. “Oh, yes. How superb!”
“Engaged? Why—why——”
“Of course. Before we were born. Your uncle and aunt and my parents had it all framed up. I thought you knew. A cut-and-dried affair. Are you not just wild with delight?”
“But—but,” expostulated Garrison, his face white, “supposing the real me—I mean, supposing I had not come home? Supposing I had been dead?”
“Why, then,” she replied calmly, “then, I suppose, I would have a chance of marrying some one I really loved. But what is the use of supposing? Here you are, turned up at the last minute, like a bad penny, and here I am, very much alive. Ergo, our relatives' wishes respectfully fulfilled, and—connubial misery ad libitum. Mes condolences. If you feel half as bad as I do, I really feel sorry for you. But, frankly, I think the joke is decidedly on me.”
Garrison was silent, staring with hard eyes at the ground. He could not begin to analyze his thoughts.
“You are not complimentary, at all events,” he said quietly at length.
“So every one tells me,” she sighed.
“I did not know of this arrangement,” he added, looking up, a queer smile twisting his lips.
“And now you are lonesomely miserable, like I am,” she rejoined, crossing a restless leg. “No doubt you left your ideal in New York. Perhaps you are married already. Are you?” she cried eagerly, seizing his arm.