Rulledge winced at the outrage, but he would not stay Halson’s answer even for the sake of righting himself.
“I have heard,” Minver went on, “that Braybridge insisted on paddling the canoe back to the other shore for her, and that it was on the way that he offered himself.” We others stared at Minver in astonishment. Halson glanced covertly towards him with his gay eyes. “Then that wasn’t true?”
“How did you hear it?” Halson asked.
“Oh, never mind. Is it true?”
“Well, I know there’s that version,” Halson said, evasively. “The engagement is only just out, as you know. As to the offer—the when and the how—I don’t know that I’m exactly at liberty to say.”
“I don’t see why,” Minver urged. “You might stretch a point for Rulledge’s sake.”
Halson looked down, and then he glanced at Minver after a furtive passage of his eye over Rulledge’s intense face. “There was something rather nice happened after—But, really, now!”
“Oh, go on!” Minver called out in contempt of his scruple.
“I haven’t the right—Well, I suppose I’m on safe ground here? It won’t go any further, of course; and it was so pretty! After she had pushed off in her canoe, you know, Braybridge—he’d followed her down to the shore of the lake—found her handkerchief in a bush where it had caught, and he held it up, and called out to her. She looked round and saw it, and called back: ‘Never mind. I can’t return for it now.’ Then Braybridge plucked up his courage, and asked if he might keep it, and she said ‘Yes,’ over her shoulder, and then she stopped paddling, and said: ‘No, no, you mustn’t, you mustn’t! You can send it to me.’ He asked where, and she said: ‘In New York—in the fall—at the Walholland.’ Braybridge never knew how he dared, but he shouted after her—she was paddling on again—‘May I bring it?’ and she called over her shoulder again, without fully facing him, but her profile was enough: ‘If you can’t get any one to bring it for you.’ The words barely reached him, but he’d have caught them if they’d been whispered; and he watched her across the lake and into the bushes, and then broke for his train. He was just in time.”
Halson beamed for pleasure upon us, and even Minver said: “Yes, that’s rather nice.” After a moment he added: “Rulledge thinks she put it there.”