Page:Julia Bride (New York and London, Harper and Brothers, 1909).djvu/38

, round at clubs and places, lately heard. This had accompanied the inevitable free question "Was she engaged to him now?"—which she had in fact almost welcomed as holding out to her the perch of opportunity. She was waiting to deal with it properly, but meanwhile he had gone on, and to such effect that it took them but three minutes to turn out, on either side, like a pair of pickpockets comparing, under shelter, their day's booty, the treasures of design concealed about their persons.

"I want you to tell the truth for me—as you only can. I want you to say that I was really all right—as right as you know; and that I simply acted like an angel in a story book, gave myself away to have it over."

"Why, my dear man," Julia cried, "you take the wind straight out of my sails! What I'm here to ask of you is that you'll confess to having been even a worse fiend than you were shown up for; to having made it impossible mother should not take proceedings." There! she had brought it out, [ 24 ]