He laughed and said, "Well, hardly! The general has been in the room ever
since you came."
"Oh, yes. Then perhaps somebody left it there before you had the room?"
Burnamy was silent again, but at last he said, "No, I flung it up there I
had forgotten all about it."
"And you wish me to forget about it, too?" Agatha asked in a gayety of
tone that still deceived him.
"It would only be fair. You made me," he rejoined, and there was
something so charming in his words and way, that she would have been glad
to do it.
But she governed herself against the temptation and said, "Women are not
good at forgetting, at least till they know what."
"Oh, I'll tell you, if you want to know," he said with a laugh, and at
the words she--sank provisionally in their accustomed seat. He sat down
beside her, but not so near as usual, and he waited so long before he
began that it seemed as if he had forgotten again. "Why, it's nothing.
Miss Etkins and her mother were here before you came, and this is a
bouquet that I meant to give her at the train when she left. But I
decided I wouldn't, and I threw it onto the shelf in the closet."
"May I ask why you thought of taking a bouquet to her at the train?"
"Well, she and her mother--I had been with them a good deal, and I
thought it would be civil.
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