“I thought you might know something about this, Helen,” he continued, “for Ferdy mentioned your name and Miss Thayer’s several times while he was delirious. I could not make out anything he said, he was so incoherent. Later, when he began to improve, I asked him about it, but he evidently did not care to talk. But how stupid I have been!” He broke off suddenly and turned to Miss Thayer. “Here I have been sitting beside you all this time and never once offered my congratulations!”
Inez drew back from the proffered hand. The color left her face as suddenly as it had come. “What do you mean?” she stammered.
“Why, De Peyster told me you were engaged,” Emory said, quite taken aback. “Have I said something I ought not to? He said you told him so.”
“Mr. De Peyster had no right to say that!” Inez cried, fiercely, almost breaking into tears.
Emory was most contrite. “Ten thousand pardons,” he apologized. “You must forgive me, Miss Thayer. Ferdy never suggested that it was a secret at all—and now I have given the whole thing away!”
Emory wished himself half-way across the Atlantic.
“I am very much annoyed,” replied Inez, still struggling to contain herself—“not with you, but with Mr. De Peyster.”
“But she is not engaged,” Armstrong insisted, with decision.
“I think Inez had better be left to settle that point herself, Jack,” Helen interrupted, pointedly.
“Then why does she not settle it?”