"Beatrice," he said, with quiet emphasis, "you have always been a good fellow, if ever there was a girl born in the world who was one. I wonder if you could be persuaded to give me the benefit of your advice, and, possibly, your active assistance?"
She flushed a little under the praise and the intimately personal request that came with it, but he did not notice this as he went on: "I've somehow got things into the biggest kind of a muddle to-day, and I have a notion to tell you all about it; I have the impulse to take you into my confidence and to ask you to help me out. I know you can do it. By Jove, Beatrice, I think you are the only person in the world who can do it! Will you?"
She shrugged her shoulders ever so little, and the flush left her cheeks, rendering them paler than was their wont. It suddenly came home to her that he was asking a favor that might prove extremely difficult to grant.
"I cannot say as to that until I hear what you wish me to do," she replied.
"I want you to help me square myself," he said, quickly.
"To square yourself?" She raised her brows in assumed surprise. "With whom?"
"Why, with Patricia, of course."
"Help you to square yourself with Patricia?" She laughed outright, but without mirth. "I am afraid I don't at all understand you, Roderick. I supposed you had already accomplished that much, for you told me--did you not?--that Patricia has just accepted you?"
"Yes, and that's the devil of it!" was the unexpected astounding reply. Beatrice moved farther away from him, and took her hand from his grasp, in well-simulated horror of what he had said.
"Let us, at least, confine ourselves to the usages and language of polite society;" she said, with mock severity. "We will leave the devil out of it, if you please. Besides, you amaze me! Patricia has just accepted you, and that is 'the devil of it.' Really, I can't guess what you mean by such a paradoxical statement as that."
"Forgive me. I am so wrought up that I scarcely know what I am talking about, or what I am doing. As I said before, I have managed to get things into a terrible mess, and I believe that you, Beatrice, are the only person alive who can unravel the tangle for me. Will you help me out? Will you?"
"You must tell me what it is, before I commit myself. You are so very aggravating, in words and manner, that I cannot even attempt to understand you."