_Miss Ramsey_: "How dare you! To speak to me of that, when-- Or perhaps you _have_ broken with her, and think you are free to hoodwink some other poor creature. But you will find that you have chosen the wrong person. And it's no excuse for you her being a little--a little--not so bright as some girls, and not so good-looking. Oh, it's enough to make any girl loathe her own looks! You mustn't suppose you can come here red-handed--yes, it's the same as a murder, and any true girl would say so--and tell me you care for me. No, Walter Ashley, I haven't fallen so low as that, though I _have_ the disgrace of your acquaintance. And I hope--I hope--if you don't like my smoking, and offering you cocktails, and talking the way I have, it will be a lesson to you. And yes!--I _will_ say it! If it will add to your misery to know that I did respect you very much, and thought everything--very highly--of you, and might have answered you very differently before, when you were free to tell me _that_--now I have nothing but the utmost abhorrence--and--disapproval of you. And--and-- Oh, I don't see how you can be so hateful!" She hides her face in her hands and rushes from the room, overturning several chairs in her course toward the door. Ashley remains staring after her, while a succession of impetuous rings make themselves heard from the street door. There is a sound of opening it, and then a flutter of skirts and anxieties, and Miss Garnett comes running into the room. VI MISS GARNETT, MR. ASHLEY _Miss Garnett_, to the maid hovering in the doorway: "Yes, I must have left it here, for I never missed it till I went to pay my fare in the motor-bus, and tried to think whether I had the exact dime, and if I hadn't whether the conductor would change a five-dollar bill or not, and then it rushed into my mind that I had left my purse somewhere, and I knew I hadn't been anywhere else." She runs from the mantel to the writing-desk in the corner, and then to the sofa, where, peering under the tea-table, she finds her purse on the shelf. "Oh, here it is, Nora, just where I put it when we began to talk, and I must have gone out and left it. I--" She starts with a little shriek, in encountering Ashley. "Oh, Mr. Ashley! What a fright you gave me! I was just looking for my purse that I missed when I went to pay my fare in the motor-bus, and was wondering whether I had the exact dime, or the conductor could change a five-dollar bill, and--" She discovers, or affects to discover, something strange in his manner. "What--what is the matter, Mr. Ashley?" _Ashley_: "I shall be glad to have you tell me--or any one." _Miss Garnett_: "I don't understand. Has Isobel--" _Ashley_: "Miss Garnett, did you know I was engaged?" _Miss Garnett_: "Why, yes; I was just going to congrat--" _Ashley_: "Well, don't, unless you can tell me whom I am engaged to." _Miss Garnett_: "Why, aren't you engaged to Emily Fray?"