“Why so?”
“Oh, indeed! you wish me to betray state secrets, do you?”
“If I wish it, you must do so, for you told me you were quite ready to do everything I wished.”
“Well, then, he is bored in his own country. Does that satisfy you?”
“Bored?”
“Yes, a proof that he is a simpleton; I allow him to fall in love with Miss Mary Grafton, and he feels bored. Can you believe it?”
“Very good; it seems, then, that if you were to find Miss Lucy Stewart indifferent to you, you would console yourself by falling in love with Miss Mary Grafton.”
“I don’t say that; in the first place, you know that Mary Grafton does not care for me; besides, a man can only console himself for a lost affection by the discovery of a new one. Again, however, I repeat, the question is not of myself, but of that young man. One might almost be tempted to call the girl he has left behind him a Helen—a Helen before the little ceremony she went through with Paris, of course.”
“He has left some one, then?”
“That is to say, some one has left him.”