If you hadn't, you'd have found out by now that young women possess a certain faculty of putting things together.

Anyway," he added enigmatically, "I don't know that the bush isn't as good a place to raise a man in as the hothouse Susan Frisingham talked about." Weston gazed at him in some astonishment, but the contractor made a little gesture with his hand.
"Well," he said, "you meant to keep the thing to yourself ?" "Until I had made the Grenfell Consolidated a success, when I should have come to you." "Quite the proper course," commented Stirling.

"It's kind of a pity you didn't stick to it.

When you had arrived at that wise decision, why did you come here to talk to my daughter ?" It was a shrewd question, and perfectly warranted, but Weston answered it candidly.
"I think I came because I could not stay away," he said.
"Then it never occurred to you that my daughter might fall in love with you ?" A flush crept into Weston's face.
"At least," he said, "I never came here with the intention of profiting by that possibility." Stirling laughed in a rather dry fashion.
"Then she was to do it all at once, when you intimated that she had permission to ?" "It almost looks like that," Weston admitted, with an embarrassment that surpassed anything he had expected.

"I'm afraid," and he made a deprecatory gesture, "that I've made a deplorable mess of the whole affair." "You have," said Stirling.