"I read it," he said, looking askance at the floor.
"Then why are you so woe-begone?"
He replied in a helpless way that he was not woe-begone. Viviette was puzzled, hurt, somewhat humiliated. She had made woman's great surrender which is usually followed by a flourish of trumpets very gratifying to hear. In fact, to most women the surrender is worth the flourish. But the recognition of this surrender appeared to find its celebration in a funeral march with muffled drums. A condemned man being fitted for the noose, as she had suggested, a mute conscientiously mourning at his own funeral, a man who had lost a stately demesne in Paradise and had been ironically compensated by the gift of a bit of foreshore of the Styx could not have worn a less joyous expression than he on whom she had conferred the boon of his heart's desire.
"You're not only woe-begone," she said, with spirit, "but you're utterly miserable. I think I have a right to know the reason. Tell me, what is it?"
She tapped a small, impatient foot.
"We haven't told my mother yet," Austin explained, "and Dick is rather nervous as to the way in which she will take the news."
"Yes," said Dick, with lame huskiness. "It's on mother's account."
Viviette laughed somewhat scornfully.
"I am not a child, my dear Austin. No man wears a face like that on account of his mother--least of all when he meets the woman who has promised to be his wife."
She flashed a challenging glance at Austin, but not a muscle of his grey face responded. Her natural expectations were baffled. There was no start of amazement, no fierce movement of anger, no indignant look of reproach. She was thrown back on herself. She said: