"Support a wife? What nonsense! Father means him to marry Cissie Boscobel, as I've told you already—and he'll fix them up with a good income."
"But apparently Hugh doesn't see things that way. He's told me—"
"Oh, he'd tell you anything."
"He's told me," I persisted, boldly, "that he—he loves me; and he's made me say that—that I love him."
"And that's where you're so foolish, dear Miss Adare. You let him take you in. It isn't that he's not sincere; I don't say that for a minute. But people can't go about marrying every one they love, now can they? I should think you'd have seen that—with the heaps of men you had there at Halifax—hardly room to step over them."
I said, slyly, "I never saw them that way."
"Oh, well, I did. And by the way, I wonder what's become of that Captain Venables. He was a case! He could take more liberties in a half-hour—don't you think?"
"He never took any liberties with me."
"Then that must have been your fault. Talk about Mr. Millinger! Our men aren't in it with yours—not when it comes to the real thing."
I got back to the subject in which I was most interested by saying, as I spread another note before me: