"I hope your aunt is well," he went on, the waiter handing baked eggs the while.
"Quite well, thank you," said Betty. "And how is your wife? I ought to have asked yesterday, but I forgot."
"My wife?"
"Oh, perhaps you aren't married yet. Of course my father told me of your engagement."
She crumbled bread and smiled pleasantly.
"So that's it," thought Vernon. "Fool that I was to forget it!"
"I am not married," he said coldly, "nor have I ever been engaged to be married."
And he ate eggs stolidly wondering what her next move would be. It was one that surprised him. For she leaned towards him and said in a perfectly new voice: "Couldn't you get Franz to move you a little more this way? One can't shout across these acres of tablecloth, and I've heaps of things to tell you."
He moved nearer, and once again he wronged Betty by a mental shrinking. Was she really going to own that she had resented the news of his engagement? She was really hopeless. He began to bristle defensively.
[Illustration: "'Ah, don't be cross!' she said"] "Anything you care to tell me will of course be of the greatest possible interest," he was beginning, but Betty interrupted him.
"Ah, don't be cross!" she said. "I know I was perfectly horrid yesterday, but I own I was rather hurt."
"Hold back," he adjured her, inwardly, "for Heaven's sake, hold back!"
"You see," she went on, "you and I were such good friends--you'd been so kind--and you told me--you talked to me about things you didn't talk of to other people,--and when I thought you'd told my step-father a secret of yours that you'd never told me, of course I felt hurt--anyone would have."
"I see," said he, beginning to.
"Of course I never dreamed that he'd lied, and even now I don't see--" Then suddenly she did see and crimsoned again.
"He didn't lie," said Vernon carefully, "it was I. But I would never have told him anything that I wouldn't have told you--nor half that I did tell you."
The waiter handed pale meat.
"Yes, the scenery in Brittany is most charming; I did some good work there. The people are so primitive and delightful too."
The waiter withdrew, and Betty said: "How do you mean--he didn't lie?"