“C. Q.”; or, In the Wireless House
—not just right. He wrinkled his freckled nose. What was it always told him about such women?
He knocked the ashes out of his pipe, pulled out the drawer of his desk and searched around among the pile of miscellaneous papers with which it was littered. With some difficulty he found what he was looking for. He placed the photograph on his knee and looked into Evelyn Farquhar’s young face with its arch glance and half parted lips. Now she was just as full of fun as Mrs. Trevelyan,—just as lively, just as jolly a companion, yet she was cut out of clean, whole cloth. She had no flighty fits of temper. She was always the same. Always the same—? His lips quivered. How could his little girl have forgotten her ring and her promise? Could she with her true nature have chucked him for even so fine a chap as Cosmo Graeme had been? Could she have given herself to another after their parting in the grove behind the gamekeeper’s? His heart told him no, yet he had heard it from one who should know. “I leave you engaged to be married to Evelyn Farquhar, one of the loveliest girls in all England,” Mrs. Trevelyan had280
