Burton. You can hook it as soon as you like."
Burton rose slowly to his feet.
"I am sorry," he said simply. "I suppose I am not quite myself to-day.
I was just thinking how jolly it would be to take you out and have a
little supper afterwards, when I remembered--I remembered--that
engagement. I've got to go through with it."
"Another girl, I suppose?" she demanded, turning away to look at herself
in the mirror.
He shivered. He was in a curious state of mind but there seemed to him
something heretical in placing Edith among the same sex.
"It is an engagement I can't very well break," he confessed. "I'll come
in again."
"You needn't," she declared, curtly. "When I say a thing, I mean it.
I've done with you."
Burton crossed the threshold into the smaller room, where Mr.
Waddington appeared to be deriving a certain amount of beatific
satisfaction from sitting in an easy-chair and having his hand held by
Miss Milly. They both looked at him, as he entered, in some surprise.
"What have you two been going on about?" the young lady asked. "I heard
Maud speaking up at you. Some lovers' quarrel, I suppose?"
The moment was passing. Burton laughed--a little hardly, perhaps, but
boisterously.
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