“Thank you, Mr. Travers,” the girl said gratefully.  “But I’m glad that you did tell him.  Otherwise I might not have heard it, at least not from a friend.”

Just then the four men on the tennis-court finished their game and came in to the bar.  Fred Daleham and another took their places and began a single.  Mrs. Rice, with Dermot and several other men, came up the steps of the verandah, and, sitting down, ordered tea for the party.

Noreen looked at her with angry eyes, and, rising, walked along the verandah to where she was sitting surrounded by the group of men.

Her enemy looked up as she approached.

“Are you coming to have tea, dear?” she said sweetly.  “I haven’t ordered any for you, but I daresay they’ll find you a cup.”

Dermot rose to offer the girl his chair; but, ignoring him, she confronted the other woman.

“Mrs. Rice, will you please tell me if it is true that you said I was engaged to Mr. Chunerbutty?” she demanded in a firm tone.

It was as if a bomb had exploded in the club.  Noreen’s voice carried clearly through the building, so that everyone inside it heard her words distinctly.  The only two members of their little community who missed them were her brother and his opponent on the tennis-court.

Mrs. Rice gasped and stared at the indignant girl, while the men about her sat up suddenly in their chairs.

“I said so?  What an idea!” ejaculated the planter’s wife.  Then in an insinuating voice she added:  “You know I never betray secrets.”

“There is no secret.  Please answer me.  Did you say to any one that I had told you I was engaged to him?” persisted the girl.

The older woman tried to crush her by a haughty assumption of superiority.

“You absurd child, you must be careful what accusations you bring.  You shouldn’t say such things.”

“Kindly answer my question,” demanded the angry girl.

Mrs. Rice lay back in her chair with affected carelessness.

“Well, aren’t you engaged to him?  Won’t even he—?” she broke off and sniggered impertinently.

“I am not.  Most certainly not,” said Noreen hotly.  “I insist on your answering me.  Did you say that I had told you we were and asked you to keep it a secret?”

“No, I did not.  Who did I tell?” snapped the other woman.

“Me for one,” broke in a voice; and Dermot took a step forward.  “You told me very clearly and precisely, Mrs. Rice, that Miss Daleham had confided to you under the pledge of secrecy—­which, by the way, you were breaking—­that she was engaged to this man.”

There was an uncomfortable pause.  Noreen glanced gratefully at her champion.  The other men shifted uneasily, and Mrs. Rice’s husband, who was standing at the bar, hastily hid his face in a whiskey and soda.

Noreen turned again to her traducer.

“Will you kindly contradict your false statement?” she asked.