She laughed.  Suddenly, on reflection, her face changed.

“Why did you say ’at last’?”

“Well—­” said I, with a significant gesture.

She made a defiant announcement:—­

“I am going to marry Willie Connor.”

“It was my turn to be astonished.  “Captain Connor?” I echoed.

“Yes.  What have you to say against him?”

“Nothing, my dear, nothing.”

And I hadn’t.  He was an exemplary young fellow, a Captain in a Territorial regiment that had been in hard training in the neighbourhood since August.  He was of decent family and upbringing, a barrister by profession, and a comely pink-faced boy with a fair moustache.  He brought a letter or two of introduction, was billeted on Mrs. Fairfax, together with one of his subs, and was made welcome at various houses.  Living under the same roof as Betty, it was natural that he should fall in love with her.  But it was not at all natural that she should fall in love with him.  She was not one of the kind that suffer fools gladly. ...  No; I had nothing against Willie Connor.  He was merely a common-place, negative young man; patriotic, keen in his work, an excellent soldier, and, as far as I knew, of blameless life; but having met him two or three times in general company, I had found him a dull dog, a terribly dull dog,—­the last man in the world for Betty Fairfax.

And then there was Leonard Boyce.  I naturally had him in my head, when I used the words “at last.”

“You don’t seem very enthusiastic,” said Betty.

“You’ve taken me by surprise,” said I.  “I’m not young enough to be familiar with these sudden jerks.”

“You thought it was Major Boyce.”

“I did, Betty.  True, you’ve said nothing about it to me for ever so long, and when I have asked you for news of him your answers have shewed me that all was not well.  But you’ve never told me, or anyone, that the engagement was broken off.”

Her young face was set sternly as she looked into the fire.

“It’s not broken off—­in the formal sense.  Leonard thought fit to let it dwindle, and it has dwindled until it has perished of inanition.”  She flashed round.  “I’m not the sort to ask any man for explanations.”

“Boyce went out with the first lot in August,” I said.  “He has had seven awful months.  Mons and all the rest of it.  You must excuse a man in the circumstances for not being aux petits soins des dames.  And he seems to be doing magnificently—­twice mentioned in dispatches.”

“I know all that,” she said.  “I’m not a fool.  But the war has nothing to do with it.  It started a month before the war broke out.  Don’t let us talk of it.”

She threw the end of her cigarette into the fire and lit a fresh one.  I accepted the action as symbolical.  I dismissed Boyce, and said:—­

“And so you’re engaged to Captain Connor?”

“More than that,” she laughed.  “I’m going to marry him.  He’s going out next week.  It’s idiotic to have an engagement.  So I’m going to marry him the day after to-morrow.”