Page:The Better Sort (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1903).djvu/179

FLICKERBRIDGE "Oh, no, it will be you. I've had nothing to do with it. Everything's all you!"

But for all it mattered now! "You'll see," he said, "that she's charming. I shall go, for to-night, to Oxford. I shall almost cross her on the way."

"Then, if she's charming, what am I to tell her from you in explanation of such strange behaviour as your flying away just as she arrives?"

"Ah, you needn't mind about that—you needn't tell her anything."

She fixed him as if as never again. "It's none of my business, of course I feel; but isn't it a little cruel if you're engaged?"

Granger gave a laugh almost as odd as one of her own. "Oh, you've cost me that!" and he put out his hand to her.

She wondered while she took it. "Cost you?"

"We're not engaged. Good-bye." 167