CHAPTER XVII
MORE PROPOSALS
I ought to have looked back on my having refused Chelubai's request merely with a sense of pleasure at having done a disagreeable thing neatly and without quarrelling with him. But my feelings about it puzzled me; I found myself full of a smouldering resentment against him for being in love with Angel; I felt it almost outrageous and certainly absurd, since she was only a child. I was still in my bewilderment when Bottiger must needs be outrageous and absurd too. One day he inveigled me into lunching alone with him on the pretext that he wished to consult me on a matter of business. I went expecting, like the innocent I am, that it was some matter of money; I wondered at the care and thought he must have expended on the lunch, and I wondered to find him plainly uncomfortable, for no reason that I could see, during the earlier part of it. When we had finished, and settled pleasantly down to our cigars and liqueurs, he said in a shamefaced way, "It's about your sister I want to talk to you."
"About Angel?" I said sharply, shaken out of
