Part 44 (1/2)
”Because you are, of course! I have known it a long time.”
”Longer than we have, I suspect,” with provoking calmness.
Paddy puckered her forehead into a frown, and condescended to look at him.
”Of course, I don't know whether it is announced or not yet, and I'm sure I don't care, but I heard from a mutual friend of yours and hers that it was settled when you were in India over a year ago.”
”Might I ask you the mutual friend's name?”
”It was Captain O'Connor. He met you both in Calcutta. But really, except that I like Miss Carew very much, this is a most uninteresting topic.”
”On the contrary, considering we have never been engaged at all, and it is very unlikely that we ever shall be, I find it extremely interesting.”
”Never been engaged at all!” gasped Paddy.
”Never to my knowledge,” with the same provoking calmness.
”Impossible! Captain O'Connor told me he had congratulated you both, and that he heard it from Miss Carew herself.”
A sudden light broke on Lawrence. ”Did he tell you it happened a year last Christmas?” he asked.
”About then. He was pa.s.sing through Calcutta on his way home.”
”Ah!” significantly.
”Then you were engaged,” scathingly, ”and with your customary changeableness have broken it off again?”
”Yes, that's about it. But this was a record in quick changes.”
”Why?--how?” irritably, feeling there was something she did not understand.
”Merely that it only lasted one evening.”
”One evening!” incredulously.
”Yes. But, of course, you do not care to hear about it. I quite understand that my affairs in any shape or form are not of the slightest interest to you,” which was quite a long sentence for Lawrence.
For a few minutes Paddy felt squashed; then her curiosity got the better of her.
”Did Miss Carew do it?” she asked.
”She did. She asked me to be her tool for one evening, having got into a sc.r.a.pe with a hot-headed Irishman and a woolly-lamb Englishman.
Since, almost as long as I can remember, I have been at Gwendoline's beck and call, I was perfectly willing. I presume the hot-headed Irishman was your friend Captain O'Connor.”
For some minutes Paddy was struck dumb. It had never entered her head to question the engagement, and she had not mentioned it to Doreen because it was such a sore subject. Hastily reviewing the past year, however, she could not but see that, on the whole, the news, though incorrect, had been most beneficial to Eileen. Undoubtedly, from the time she learnt of Lawrence's supposed engagement, she had been better able to pull herself together and set steadily about forgetting him.
Only this could not, to a girl like Paddy, in any measure abate what had gone. For every tear Lawrence's heartlessness had made her sister shed, she felt she had an undying grudge against him, and she would not forget. Presently, to break the silence, she remarked:
”I don't know how you can help falling in love with Miss Carew. Why aren't you engaged to her?”
”Well, one very good reason, perhaps, is the fact that she is practically engaged to someone else.”