"Just fancy, it's being me! That night, when he asked me, I thought I should have gone clean off it. Sometimes I can hardly believe it yet. I hadn't a notion--not a notion! And it makes everything perfectly wonderful, knowing a man's so struck on you, though he _is_ quiet and don't say much about it. Of course they mean all the more, that sort. We walk along the streets, but he won't let me stop out late for fear of tiring me, and he always takes me right to the door, and I'm trying hard not to be selfish, but it makes me so sorry for other girls who haven't got off--and perhaps if I sell some of my shares to start us with we can get married next year--if he gets a permanency, that is." Louie was still thunderstruck. Mr. Jeffries engaged to--Kitty Windus! That unnamed personage was--Kitty Windus! She, Louie, was asked to believe _that_, in the face of all she had seen! "I am glad," she found herself murmuring again. "Did _you_ guess?" Kitty asked eagerly. She would have given her ears to be told that somebody else had guessed. "No," Louie replied, and added, seeing Kitty's fallen face: "I should have thought Mr. Merridew. You seemed such great friends." At that Kitty broke in: "Poor Archie! I said it made one selfish.... His father's very ill. We were going on Putney Heath to-day, all four of us, Archie and Evie and Jeff and me; but Archie had a wire to go home this morning, poor Archie, and so I'm going to meet the others by-and-by. But anyway, if anything does happen, he'll be able to get married as soon as he likes--he's an only son." At this Louie was even more startled. Mr. Jeffries and the Soames girl together at that moment! She remembered those irrevocable looks. "So Mr. Merridew and Miss Soames are engaged, then?" she said. "Well," Kitty admitted, "it comes to the same thing. They're as good as. I wish Jeff was coming into a bit, like Archie." "You say they're here, at Putney, this afternoon?" "Jeff and Evie? Yes. I'm meeting them at five." Even as Louie was inwardly predicting that Kitty would not see her Mr. Jeffries at five, Miss Dot Mayville entered. But Louie did not want Kitty to go just yet. She wanted to know more of this extraordinary development of her drama. "May we have some tea?" she asked, and Miss Dot went out again. Louie lay back on her pillow and frowned at the foot of her white-painted bed. "It's very kind of you to give up your afternoon to me," she said by-and-by. "Oh, my dear, as if I wouldn't!" Kitty broke out almost reproachfully. "I keep telling myself I mustn't be selfish, when Jeff and I have years before us--I'm just beginning to realise it--years--and, oh dear, here I am, selfish again, talking all about myself and never a word about you." But Louie did not want words about herself. She wanted to hear all, all, about Kitty and Mr. Jeffries. The thing became more incredible moment by moment.