“I will settle it.” Inez sat up very straight in her chair, her tense features making her face look drawn in its ashy paleness.
“Jack has no right to force you into any such position, Inez,” Helen protested, indignantly; “he is forgetting himself.”
“De Peyster is responsible for the whole thing.” Emory struggled to step in between the clash of arms. “I recall the very words. ‘Phil, old chap,’ he said, ‘you remember Miss Thayer? She is engaged. She told me she had found some one whom she loved better than her life.’ Can you blame me for making such a consummate ass of myself?”
Armstrong’s intense interest had taken him too deeply into the affair for him to heed Helen’s protests.
“You never said anything of the kind, did you, Miss Thayer?”
“I am not engaged,” replied Inez, very firmly, “and I cannot understand why Mr. De Peyster should have put me in this uncomfortable position.”
“Of course not,” assented Armstrong, with evident satisfaction. “De Peyster is a fool. I will tell him so the next time I see him.”
“I think we had better change the subject,” said Helen, rising, her face flushed with indignation. “The methods of the Inquisition have no place at a modern dinner-table.”