“I think the best plan would be for Miss Deane to come out and lunch with me. It’s just on one o’clock. I can get full details from her.”
“Certainly, Miss Sheringham,” said Tommy. “An excellent plan.”
“Look here,” said Tuppence when they were comfortably ensconced at a little table in a neighboring restaurant, “I want to know. Is there any special reason why you want to find out about all this?”
Monica blushed.
“Well, you see—”
“Out with it,” said Tuppence encouragingly.
“Well—there are two men who—who—want to marry me.”
“The usual story, I suppose? One rich, one poor, and the poor one is the one you like!”
“I don’t know how you know all these things,” murmured the girl.
“That’s a sort of law of Nature,” explained Tuppence. “It happens to everybody. It happens to me.”
“You see, even if I sell the house, it won’t bring us enough to live on. Gerald is a dear, but he’s desperately poor—though he’s a very clever engineer and if only he had a little capital, his firm would take him into partnership. The other, Mr. Partridge, is a very good man, I am sure—and well off, and if I married him it would be an end of all our troubles. But—but—”
“I know,” said Tuppence sympathetically. “It isn’t the same thing at all. You can go on telling yourself how good and worthy he is, and adding up his qualities as though they were an addition sum—and it all has a simply refrigerating effect.”