Since she had given a good deal of feminine diplomacy to the task of keeping him at a reasonable distance, Bromfield was naturally surprised.

“That’s certainly a leading question,” he parried, “What are you up to, Bee?  Are you spoofing me?”

“I’m proposing to you,” she explained, with a flirt of her hand and an engaging smile toward a man and a girl who had just come into the Palm Room.  “I don’t suppose I do it very well because I haven’t had your experience.  But I’m doing the best I can.”

The New Yorker was a supple diplomatist.  If Beatrice had chosen this place and hour to become engaged to him, he had no objection in the world.  The endearments that usually marked such an event could wait.  But he was not quite sure of his ground.

His lids narrowed a trifle.  “Do you mean that you’ve changed your mind?”

“Have you?” she asked quickly with a sidelong slant of eyes at him.

“Do I act as though I had?”

“You don’t help a fellow out much, Clary,” she complained with a laugh not born of mirth.  “I’ll never propose to you again.”

“I’m still very much at your service, Bee.”

“Does that mean you still think you want me?”

“I don’t think.  I know it.”

“Quite sure?”

“Quite sure.”

“Then you’re on,” she told him with a little nod.  “Thank you, kind sir.”

Bromfield drew a deep breath.  “By Jove, you’re a good little sport, Bee.  I think I’ll get up and give three ringing cheers.”

“I’d like to see you do that,” she mocked.

“Of course you know I’m the happiest man in the world,” he said with well-ordered composure.

“You’re not exactly what I’d call a rapturous lover, Clary.  But I’m not either for that matter, so I dare say we’ll hit it off very well.”

“I’m a good deal harder hit than I’ve ever let on, dear girl.  And I’m going to make you very happy.  That’s a promise.”

Nevertheless he watched her warily behind a manner of graceful eagerness.  There had been a suggestion almost of bitterness in her voice.  A suspicious little thought was filtering through the back of his mind.  “What the deuce has got into the girl?  Has she been quarreling with that bounder from Arizona?”

“I’m glad of that.  I’ll try to make you a good wife, even if—­” She let the sentence die out unfinished.

Beneath her fan their hands met for a moment.

“May I tell everybody how happy I am?”

“If you like,” she agreed.

“A short engagement,” he ventured.

“Yes,” she nodded.  “And take me away for a while.  I’m tired of New York, I think.”

“I’ll take you to a place where the paths are primrose-strewn and where nightingales sing,” he promised rashly.

She smiled incredulously, a wise old little smile that had no right on her young face.

The report of the engagement spread at once.  Bromfield took care of that.  It ran like wildfire upstairs and down in the Whitford establishment.  Naturally Johnnie, who was neither one of the servants nor a member of the family, was the last to hear of it.  One day the word was carried to him, and a few hours later he read the confirmation of it on the hand of his young mistress.