Oh she'd had every reason to worry this was going to go poorly. He looked as if she'd slapped him and as soon as he stepped back she moved forward, trying to keep him from either falling or spiraling or both at this point. Elsie worried, briefly, that he might be angry with her, but it didn't look that way. He looked completely blindsided of course, but thankfully not angry. This very situation had been a possibility he'd been the one to think of and bring up in the past, though she'd never imagined in a million years this would be an actual obstacle they'd face, here it was and they had to deal with it.

"Hey, hey," She moved to gently frame his face with her hands, forcing him to look at her. "It's only a problem if my parents find out, I haven't told them yet." She didn't plan to either if she could get away with it. Unfortunately she couldn't quite gauge if Mr. Adlard would get tired of waiting and try again at a time when her mother was available and she was not. "I didn't want to hide it from you though." Nope, no more secrets between them.

Still, it was a sticky situation, as she knew she had to let Mr. Adlard down gently. He was really very kind and he deserved somebody who could and would give him what he wanted, which was not Elsie. She'd come to that conclusion over the last couple weeks of pondering how to solve this. It wasn't fair to anyone in the situation really, but she wasn't sure if her parents would push the issue or not.

Here and now, however, Elsie needed Tyb to understand that she certainly had not changed her mind about him whatsoever and would hopefully be able to solve this quietly. "Nothing's changed," She promised him, blue eyes turned on his intently. "But yes, an acquaintance from the library, we exchanged a few letters on book recommendations. I don't really know anything else about him." Maybe more than a few, but never on anything much other than books! Elsie had poured over the exchanges trying to think of where she'd gone wrong, but wasn't much able to decipher anything without her own letters to reread. She was such a disaster and she didn't even know how.