“It was so intended.”  Margaret’s eyes were upon him, her grandmother’s own favorite expression in them.  Now that she was no longer a matrimonial offering she felt profoundly indifferent to eligible men, rejoiced in her freedom to act toward them as she wished.  “I do not permit any one to lie to me about the man I have engaged to marry.”

“What!” shouted Grant.  “It was true?”

“Go out into the garden and try to calm yourself, Grant,” said the girl haughtily.  “And if you can’t, why—­take yourself off home.  And don’t come back until you are ready to apologize.”

“Rita, why didn’t you give me a hint?  I’d have married you myself.  I’m willing to do it....Rita, will you marry me?”

Margaret leaned back upon the sofa and laughed until his blood began to run alternately hot and cold.

“I beg your pardon,” he stammered.  “I did not realize how it sounded.  Only—­you know how things are with our sort of people.  And, as men go, I can’t help knowing I’m what’s called a catch, and that you’re looking for a suitable husband....As it’s apparently a question of him or me, and as you’ve admitted you got him by practically proposing—...  Damn it all, Rita, I want you, and I’m not going to let such a man as he is have you.  I never dreamed you’d bother with him seriously or I’d not have been so slow.”

Margaret was leaning back, looking up at him.  “I’ve sunk even lower than I thought,” she said, bringing to an end the painful silence which followed this speech.

“What do you mean, Rita?”

She laughed cynically, shrugged her shoulders.  First, Craig’s impudent assumption that she loved him, and his rude violation of her lips; now, this frank insolence of insult, the more savage that it was unconscious—­and from the oldest and closest of her men friends.  If one did not die under such outrages, but continued to live and let live, one could save the situation only by laughing.  So, Margaret laughed—­and Arkwright shivered.

“For God’s sake, Rita!” he cried.  “I’d not have believed that lips so young and fresh as yours could utter such a cynical sound.”

She looked at him with disdainful, derisive eyes.  “It’s fortunate for me that I have a sense of humor,” said she.  “And for you,” she added.

“But I am in earnest, I mean it—­every word I said.”

“That’s just it,” replied she.  “You meant it—­every word.”

“You will marry me?”

“I will not.”

“Why?”

“For several reasons.  For instance, I happen to be engaged to another man.”

“That is—­nothing.”  He snapped his fingers.

She elevated her brows.  “Nothing?”

“He’d not keep his promise to you if—­In fact, he was debating with me whether or not he’d back down.”

“Either what you say is false,” said she evenly, “or you are betraying the confidence of a friend who trusted in your honor.”