"
Tavernake shook his head.
"I am sorry," he said. "I have already an engagement."
She looked at him curiously. Was it really true that he had
become indifferent? She was not used to men who escaped.
"Tell me," she asked, abruptly, "why did you come? I don't
understand. You are here, and you pass your time being rude to
me. I ask you to take me to dinner and you refuse. Do you know
that scarcely a man in London would not have jumped at such a
chance?"
"Very likely," Tavernake answered. "I have no experience in such
matters. I only know that I am going to do something else."
"Something you want to do very much?" she whispered.
"I am going down to a little music-hall in Whitechapel,"
Tavernake said, "and I am going to meet your sister and I am
going to put her in a cab and take her to have some supper, and I
am going to worry her until she promises to be my wife."
"You are certainly a devoted admirer of the family," she laughed.
"Perhaps you were in love with her all the time."
"Perhaps I was," he admitted.
She shook her head.
"I don't believe it," she said. "I think you were quite fond of
me once. You have such absurdly old-fashioned ideas or I think
that you would be fond of me now."
Tavernake rose to his feet.
"I am going," he declared. "This will be good-bye. To-morrow I
am going to British Columbia."
The laughter faded for a moment from her face. She was suddenly
serious.
"Don't go," she begged.
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