“What did you think?”

“Naturally, I assumed—from your saying so much about your duty—I assumed your father had lost, or was about to lose, his money.”

“Mercy, no!” exclaimed she, brightening hopefully. “I meant my family—my social—duty.”

His expression was quizzical. “To be sure—to be sure. I never thought of that.”

“You see, we’re newcomers among fashionable people, while the Vanderkiefs—they’re right at the top of the heap.”

He nodded smilingly. “Of course—of course. A very sensible marriage.”

“But I’m not going to marry him,” cried she. “I never intended to.”

He forgot where he was for a moment in his astonishment. “Then why did you engage yourself to him?”

“It isn’t that kind of engagement,” she explained sweetly. “I did it because you acted so. But I was square with Peter. I warned him I didn’t love him and[110] couldn’t. Our engagement is simply that he is having a chance to make me care for him if he can.”

[110]

“You’ll be married within six months,” said Roger lightly; and he lifted a glass of champagne to his lips.

“Not to him,” replied she. “If to anybody, to the man I love—the man who loves me.”

Her words, so direct, and her tone, so simple, disconcerted him to such an extent that he choked upon the champagne. While he was still coughing Mrs. Richmond rose, and the men were left alone. Roger went with the first man who rejoined the women. He made straight for Mrs. Richmond, bade her good night and got himself out of the house before Beatrice, hemmed in by several people, could extricate herself and intercept him.

He did the homeward drive slowly, preyed upon by swarms of disagreeable thoughts. His experience of women had taught him to be more than suspicious of any feminine show of enthusiasm for a man; women were too self-centered, too prudent by nature and training, to give themselves out freely, even when encouraged—unless there were some strong, sordid motive. In this case sordid motive simply could not be. Nor could he conceive any practical reason why Beatrice should pretend to care for him—any practical reason why she[111] should wish to marry him. He felt like a fool—as a normal man not swollen with conceit is bound to feel in 

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