ON the way home I made Waldo promise not to tell about our engagement till I agreed. He did promise, but I think he must have given a pretty strong hint at home. There was such a wonderful absence of awkward references or questions. My mother never spoke of Arsenio; Aunt Bertha refrained from comment when it became known that Mr. Frost and his daughter had suddenly gone on a holiday, yachting—at the very beginning of what would have been Nina’s first season! And Sir Paget, besides petting me more than ever, began to talk to me as if I had a proprietorial interest in Cragsfoot. Waldo himself was very gentle and patient with me; he felt that he had ‘rushed’ me, I think, and was anxious not to frighten me. I believe that the possibility of something like what did in the end happen was always at the back of his mind; he never felt secure. There was always Arsenio; and I was—unaccountable! So he soothed and smoothed me, and let me put off the announcement of the engagement for nearly six months. We weren’t at Cragsfoot all that time, but coming and going between there and London. Mother took the Mount Street flat then; my opinion was—and is—that Sir Paget or Waldo paid for it. But, whether in town or country, Waldo and I were meeting all the time. “I didn’t announce the engagement because I didn’t want to burn my boats; and then I did agree to announce it because I did want to burn my boats! That was the kind of person I was then—at all events, the kind of condition I was in. I had got over my fears almost entirely. Nina had thrown up the sponge; Arsenio wouldn’t betray me; Waldo dreamt of nothing worse than the picturesque flirtation in a gondola (though he didn’t like even that!). Nobody could prove, or even plausibly suggest, anything; unless my own nerve gave way, I was quite safe. So I thought then, anyhow. And I had almost got over my sense of guiltiness too. It came over me now and then; but it didn’t any longer seem very real; perhaps I had just exhausted my feelings about it. It wasn’t what I had done which troubled me all through those long months, both before the announcement and after it; it was what I was doing and what I was going to do. I liked Waldo enormously, and more and more as I knew him better. In spite of his tempers, he’s a great gentleman. But he never kissed me, he never took me in his arms, without my thinking of Arsenio.