I should have remembered my engagement to Miss
Ashton."
"Remembered your engagement to Miss Ashton!" echoed the dowager, her
voice becoming a little shrill. "What engagement?"
Lord Hartledon began to recover himself, though he looked foolish still.
With these nervous men it is the first plunge that tells; get that over
and they are brave as their fellows.
"I cannot marry two women, Lady Kirton, and I am bound to Anne."
The old dowager's voice toned down, and she pulled her black feathers
straight upon her head.
"My dear Hartledon, I don't think you know what you are talking about.
You engaged yourself to Maude some weeks ago."
"Well--but--whatever may have passed, engagement or no engagement, I
could not legally do it," returned the unhappy young man, too considerate
to say the engagement was hers, not his. "You knew I was bound to Anne,
Lady Kirton."
"Bound to a fiddlestick!" said the dowager. "Excuse my plainness,
Hartledon. When you engaged yourself to the young woman you were poor and
a nobody, and the step was perhaps excusable. Lord Hartledon is not bound
by the promises of Val Elster. All the young women in the kingdom, who
have parsons for fathers, could not oblige him to be so."
"I am bound to her in honour; and"--in love he was going to say, but let
the words die away unspoken.
"Hartledon, you are bound in honour to my daughter; you have sought her
affections, and gained them.
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