"Now that we are here----" she began in her turn.
"Now that you have followed me here," the girl rang out, "what is it that you have to say to me?" She was white and a bright flame spot showed on either cheek.
"I--oh," the elder woman by an effort drew the remnant of the grand manner about her; "it is Mr. Weatheral, I think, who might have something to say." She caught the occasion as it were on the wing. Peter heard the quick breath behind him with which she grasped it. "Now that you are here, however, I'll tell your party that you will be driving home with us." She gathered up her draperies and was gone down the path she had come before either of the others thought to stop her. Eunice had not made a move to do so. She stood clasping the back of the chair from which she had freed her dress, and looked across it mutinously at Peter.
"And what," she quivered, "has Mr. Weatheral to say to me?"
"There is nothing," he told her, "that I would say to you, Miss Goodward, unless you wished to hear it." His magnanimity shamed her a little.
"I broke my engagement to you," she admitted, "broke it to come here with--the others. I haven't any excuse to offer you."
"And when," Peter demanded of her, "have I asked any other excuse of you for anything that you chose to do except that you chose it. There _was_ something I wished to say to you, that I hoped for a more auspicious occasion...." He hurried on with it suddenly as a thing to be got over with at all hazards. "It was to say that I hoped you might not find it utterly beyond you to think of marrying me." He saw her sway a little, holding still to her chair, and moved toward her a step, dizzy himself with the sudden onset of emotion. "But now that it is said, if it distresses you we will say no more about it." She waved him back for a moment without altering her strained, trapped attitude.
"Have you said this to mamma? And has she--has she said anything to you? About me, I mean; how I might take it, or anything?"
"She said that she couldn't answer for you; that it was your feeling that must be taken into account. She put me, so to speak, on my own feet in so far as _that_ was concerned." He waited for her answer to that, and none coming, though he saw that she grew a little easier, he went on presently. "There is, however, much that I feel ought to be said about my feeling for you, what it means to me, what I hoped----" She stopped him with a gesture; he could see her lovely manner coming back to her as quiet comes to the surface of a smitten pool.