"I'm twenty-seven."
"Dear me! dear me! You look forty."
"I feel eighty."
"Yes; I dare say you do. Any one who's got into so many scrapes as you have must feel the burden of time. I don't think I ever saw a young woman make such poor use of her opportunities. Why didn't you marry Derek Pruyn?"
Diane kept herself quite still, her needle arrested half-way through its stitch. She took time to reflect that it was useless to feel annoyed at anything he might say, and when she formed her answer it was in the spirit of meeting him in his own vein.
"What makes you think I ever had the chance?"
"Because I gave it to you myself."
"You, Mr. van Tromp?"
"Yes; me. I did all that wire-pulling when you first came to New York; and I did it just so that you might catch him."
"Oh?"