I glanced quickly at the tray on the table, crowded with the _débris_ of what had been tea for two, one saucer piled high with cigarette-ends that told their own tale. Who had been? One of Cicely’s Slade girls? But how would _they_ know? Whoever it was must have stayed _hours_! “It was your friend”—Cicely announced this even as the cork hurls itself from an unwired bottle of champagne—“Mr. Sydney Vandeleur!” “Sydney—he’s been here?” “Well, of course!” “What on earth for?” “What _for_, Tots? Why, to see _you_! And, I say! How awfully charming and clever and delightful he is! And so handsome! Such a real artist’s head, I call it! _Exactly_ like a Vandyke of Charles the First! Oh, my dear! _Don’t_ tell me you’ve gone and got engaged to somebody else, when there’s such a really _wonderful_ person so desperately in love with you!” “Who says he’s in love with me?” “Why, he does, of course. Didn’t you _know_? You must have. _Didn’t_ you?” “N-no.” Slowly I dropped my gloves and umbrella and vanity-bag and paper on to the table. Of course I have “known,” at the back of my mind, all the time about Sydney. But however positive a girl may be that a man cares for her, _until he’s told her so she’s never certain_. This may sound Irish—to a man. Any _girl_ understands.... To hear the fact proclaimed by Cicely’s lips—which really, I do believe, would blurt out anything that came into her red head!—gave me the same shock of surprise that it would have done even if I’d never received little attentions from Sydney, never heard his neatly-turned compliments, never seen those handsome brown eyes of his fixed upon me in unmistakable admiration, or noticed the blank mask that had suddenly fallen over them yesterday, when I broke to the Vandeleurs the news of my so-called engagement. Cicely went on with her tale, enjoying it thoroughly. “My dear Tots, you must have known. He’s wanted to marry you ever since you were a slip of a schoolgirl with a little proud pearl of a face and that lovely dark hair of yours in a great mane down to your waist. Even then he always meant to propose to you.” “And he tells _you_ that? Not me?” Here I sat down suddenly in the elbow-chair with the one arm “that’s always a-comin’ off, drat it!” as Mrs. Skinner says. It came off now. “_Drat_ it!” I quoted, through my teeth, and hurled the broken arm into a corner with a violence that did some—not much—good to my feelings. “He never told me, Cicely.”