She felt, that, under the guise of allusions, they were discussing their own relations.
"You are right," he said. "But suppose he cannot choose? What if he be so bound up in her, that he would endure any thing, would forgive any thing?"
"Forgiveness," she retorted bitterly, "is sweet to the forgiver."
"It may at least show him his own weakness. If the lady's love for Douglas is not sufficient to make her glad of a small sacrifice for him, or at least to make her endure it, he has small reason to flatter himself upon the depths of her affection; and he must despise himself for wearing his heart upon his sleeve for her daws to peck at."
"Well," she said irrelevantly, her heart leaping at the assurance that after all he still loved her, "who laughs last laughs best."
"Not always," he returned. "The last laugh may have a bitterness from which the first was happily free."
"Pooh!" she laughed, turning a pirouette, her cue standing out behind her. "How like two owls we are, talking in this gloomy room! Let us get out among people."
She had suddenly recovered her spirits. Since he loved her, she forgot that she was wounding him, and that he was unhappy. At another time the thought would have produced tenderness: now it brought a reaction from her despondency, and for the moment she was her most piquant, saucy self. She hummed a snatch of song,—
"'You call me inconstant and fickle,
But there's no justice in that;
For the passing fancy I showed you'"—
"Patty!" her lover cried, catching her wrist, "are you perfectly heartless?"