“I hope you have not lost your heart,” cried Amy, bursting out into a merry laugh.
“Hush, don’t be so ridiculous! What can you be thinking about? Lost my heart, indeed. I should hope not. He may be very nice in his way, but he’s not a sort of man I am likely to fall in love with.”
“No, he’s not particularly handsome—is he?”
“You mind your own business, girl, and don’t be so demonstrative or talkative.”
Amy said no more—she felt that she had already said more than enough.
The vehicle was driven rapidly along, and in the due course of time the doctor’s widow reached her house.
She threw off her travelling costume, and arranged herself in an exquisitely and faultlessly-made dress. She was about to receive visitors. Throngs of persons now flocked to her house; indeed, she was quite the rage for a brief period, and people who before had taken but little notice of her, all of a sudden demonstrated a feeling of friendship, or it might be attachment, which, to say the least of it, was most remarkable.
She was a woman, however, who had a pretty good knowledge of the world, and the people who lived in it, and could gauge with a tolerable degree of accuracy the amount of sincerity of those who all of a sudden professed to be her friends.
She had had at all times an extensive circle of acquaintances. From the very nature of her position, this could not be otherwise, for although she had not been recognised or patronised by the extremely discreet and virtuous of the upper classes, she had been received as a guest by some of the most wealthy and aristocratic persons in the land; the union with the doctor silenced in a great measure the rumours as to her antecedents. She cared but little for the opinion of the world. Indeed, she had been lectured by her former protectors to contemn it, but deep down in the bottom of her heart lurked sad and bitter recollections, which she could not smother; but despite all this she looked hopefully to the future.
She had always been a well-conducted, lady-like woman, and never indulged in coarse inuendoes or vulgar display. Error had been in a great measure forced upon her; and considering how she had been petted and sought after, it is a matter of surprise that she contrived to remain so quiet and unobtrusive in her ways and habits.