He greeted me very kindly, though I think that it had cost him an effort to “place” me, to remember who I was. He spoke warmly of the kindness which my uncle and Miss Fleming had shown to his motherless girl. “They’ve made you quite at home at Cragsfoot, haven’t they, Nina? And your cousin Waldo—Mr. Waldo taught you billiards, didn’t he?” (There was no billiard room at Cragsfoot; these lessons presumably took place at Briarmount.) “And he made company for your rides, too! I hope he’s very well, Mr. Rillington? Oh, but didn’t you tell me that he was engaged to be married, my dear?”
One must allow for preoccupation with important affairs. Still, this was Saturday; as recently as the preceding Tuesday week, Mr. Frost would have attended Waldo’s wedding, but for his own indisposition. I stole a glance at Nina; she was just a little red again. I was not far from embarrassment myself—on Waldo’s account; I gave a weak laugh and said: “I’m afraid it’s not quite certain that the event will come off.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he murmured apologetically. “It was the pretty girl who came here with him once or twice—Miss—Miss—yes, Miss Knyvett?”
“Yes, it was, Mr. Frost. But the—well, the arrangement is sort of—of suspended.” With that distinctly lame explanation I rose to take my leave.
I rather thought that Nina, being by now pretty plainly convicted of fibbing, would stay where she was, and thus avoid being left alone with me. However, she escorted me back through Briarmount’s spacious hall—furnished as a sitting-room and very comfortable. She even came out into the drive with me and, as she gave me her hand in farewell, she said, with a little jerk of her head back towards the scene of my talk with her father, “After that, I suppose you’re wondering what was the real reason for my not coming to the wedding?”
“Perhaps I am. Because you seem to have kept up the old friendship since I’ve been away.”
“Sometimes people don’t go to functions because they’re not invited.”
“I should have been the skeleton at the feast!” She looked me in the face, smiling, but in a rather set, forced fashion. Then, as she turned away, she added with a laugh, “Only, as it turned out, there was no feast, was there, Mr. Rillington?”