"I! not I, indeed!"
"Why not, dear Helen!" cried Seymour.
"Because—because I have only lately known them."
"Oh! that is quite enough," he hastily returned; but I still refused.
However, the ladies returned, accompanied by a young man of Seymour's acquaintance; and in a few minutes we beheld him laughing and talking with the party. My feelings at that moment still live in my memory as vividly as ever. I was thunder-struck. What! Seymour Pendarves, the friend of my childhood, to leave me for women whom he never saw before; and call them handsomer than any thing he had seen since he left London! It was in vain that two youths of my acquaintance—one of them a young lord—joined my deserted side: I was silent, absent, and unhappy; for Seymour remained with his new acquaintance.
It never occurred to me to talk and laugh with my beaux, for I was a stranger to coquetry, and the natural feelings of my heart were allowed to display themselves: still, an untaught delicacy made me try to hide the cause of my oddness from my companions; and a headache, which was not feigned, was my excuse.
The ladies, however, at length left the walk, and Seymour was forced to return to us. He immediately launched forth into rapturous praises of their charms and elegant manners, while I listened in angry silence, as I had expected him to apologize for leaving me; and nothing, I perceived, was further from his thoughts.
"But what is the matter?" cried he. "Are you not well, Helen, that you do not speak?"
"Not quite."
"Helen has a headache," said my cousin.