Since she prided herself on being sufficient for the
emergencies of life, she cast about in her mind to determine which of the
interviews that lay before her was responsible for her excitement. It was,
to be sure, an unusual experience for a young woman to be told that her
fiance would be unable to marry her, owing to a subsequent engagement, but
she looked forward to it with keen anticipation, and would not have missed
it for the world. Since she pushed the thought of the other interview into
the background of her mind and refused to contemplate it at all, she did
not see how that could lend any impetus to her pulse.
But though she was pleasantly excited as she swept into the reception-room,
Ridgway was unable to detect the fact in her cool little nod and frank,
careless handshake. Indeed, she looked so entirely mistress of herself, so
much the perfectly gowned exquisite, that he began to dread anew the task
he had set himself. It is not a pleasant thing under the most favorable
circumstances to beg off from marrying a young woman one has engaged
oneself to, and Ridgway did not find it easier because the young woman
looked every inch a queen, and was so manifestly far from suspecting the
object of his call.
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