I dreaded telling them more than I can say.  I don’t know with what countenance a man can come and tell the woman he has loved (and proposed to three times running) that he has consoled himself with her younger sister.  I wanted to avoid every appearance of a fatuous triumph in my success with Norah.  And after sticking for four years to my vow of everlasting devotion to Mrs. Jevons I shrank from the confession of a new allegiance.  On the other hand, I owed it to Norah to declare myself happy without any airs of deprecation and contrition.  And I had certain obligations to the Truth.  Why I should have supposed that the Truth should have been disagreeable to Mrs. Jevons Heaven only knows.  I suppose these scruples are the last illusions of our egoism.  Still, I think that only an impudent egoist like Jevons could have carried off such an embarrassment with any brilliance.

As it happened it was taken out of my hands.  Jimmy, who had foreseen the thing itself, foresaw also my predicament and provided for it.  As I came into the room he said, “It’s all right, old man.  You haven’t got to tell us.  We know all about it.”

I looked at Viola.  She was sitting on part of Jimmy’s chair, with her arm round his shoulder.

“Did Norah tell you, after all?” I said.

Viola pushed out her chin at me and shook her head.

“No, Furny dear, she didn’t tell me a thing.  It was your face.”

“Don’t you believe her,” Jimmy said.  “Your face hasn’t anything to do with it.  Your face is a tomb of secrets—­a beautiful, white tomb.  And you are all rectitude and discretion.  We knew it ages ago.”

“How could you possibly know it, when I didn’t?”

“Because it’s one of those things” (he twinkled) “that other people always do know.”

“Were we as obvious as all that?”

“I didn’t say you were obvious.  I said It was.”

I sat down facing them, and I suppose I must have looked supremely foolish, for Viola began to laugh and Jevons went on twinkling, not in the least as if he saw a joke, but with a thoughtful and complacent air, as if he were turning over the result of some private speculation that had come off entirely to his satisfaction.

Then she took pity on me.

“He means it was bound to happen.  It was the heaven-appointed thing.  The first minute I saw you, Wally, I thought, ’What an adorable husband he’d make for Norah!’ And Jimmy’s trying to tell you that we’ve been hoping it would come and wanting it to come and waiting for it to come for the last year.”

“I’m trying to tell him,” said Jimmy, “that we’ve been meaning it to come, and trying to make it come, and seeing it come for the last three years.”

This was a blow at the attitude of romantic devotion, and I had to defend it.

“Do you believe that, Viola?” I said.

“Of course I believe it if Jimmy says so.”