They went picnicking that day in each
other's charge; and after Braybridge left he wrote back to her, as Mrs.
Welkin knew from the letters that passed through her hands, and--Well,
their engagement has come out, and--" Wanhope paused, with an air that
was at first indefinite, and then definitive.
"You don't mean," Rulledge burst out in a note of deep wrong, "that
that's all you know about it?"
"Yes, that's all I know," Wanhope confessed, as if somewhat surprised
himself at the fact.
"Well!"
Wanhope tried to offer the only reparation in his power. "I can
conjecture--we can all conjecture--"
He hesitated; then: "Well, go on with your conjecture," Rulledge said,
forgivingly.
"Why--" Wanhope began again; but at that moment a man who had been
elected the year before, and then gone off on a long absence, put his
head in between the dull-red hangings of the doorway. It was Halson,
whom I did not know very well, but liked better than I knew. His eyes
were dancing with what seemed the inextinguishable gayety of his
temperament, rather than any present occasion, and his smile carried his
little mustache well away from his handsome teeth.
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