"It was not like you to throw cold water on my pleasure." He turned away his head from her reconciled eyes.

She was making what he had come to say doubly hard for him.
"I want to tell you something," he said.

"I should like you to hear it from me first, because you have been so good a friend to me.

I have spoken to you of my cousin, Nelly.

I wanted you to be her friend.
Well--I am to marry my cousin in July." There was silence for a moment after he had said it, a silence broken only by the ticking of the noisy clock on the mantelpiece, by the sounds of the street outside.
"There has been an implicit engagement between my cousin and myself," he went on as though he set his teeth to it.