“They didn’t in this instance,” relied Libby. “She was a pretty old girl. What made you think she was young?”
“I don’t know. I thought you said she was young.” She blushed, and seemed about to say more, but she did not.
He waited, and then he said, “You can tell Mrs. Maynard that I telegraphed on my own responsibility, if you think it’s going to alarm her.”
“Well,” said Grace, with a helpless sigh.
“You don’t like to tell her that,” he suggested, after a moment, in which he had watched her.
“How do you know?”
“Oh, I know. And some day I will tell you how—if you will let me.”
It seemed a question; and she did not know what it was that kept her—silent and breathless and hot in the throat. “I don’t like to do it,” she said at last. “I hate myself whenever I have to feign anything. I knew perfectly well that you didn’t say she was young,” she broke out desperately.
“Say Mrs. Maynard was young?” he asked stupidly.
“No!” she cried. She rose hastily from the bench where she had been sitting with him. “I must go back to her now.”