“I’ll give you the sapphire bracelet Lady Mountstuart gave me, if he didn’t tell you he loved you, and ask if there’d be a chance for him in case he got Algiers.”
“I wouldn’t take your bracelet even if—if—. But you’re a little witch, Lisa.”
“Of course I am!” I exclaimed, smiling, though I had a sickening wrench of the heart. “And I suppose you forgot all his faults and failings, and said he could have you, Algiers or no Algiers.”
“I don’t believe he has all those faults and failings you were talking about this evening,” said Di, with her cheeks very pink. “He may have flirted a little at one time. Women have spoiled him a lot. But—but he does love me, Lisa.”
“And he did love Maxine!” I laughed.
“He didn’t. He never loved her. I—you see, you put such horrid thoughts into my head that—that I just mentioned her name when he said to-night—oh, when he said the usual things, about never having cared seriously for anyone until he saw me. Only—it seems treacherous to call them ‘usual’ because—when you love a man you feel that the things he says can never have been said before, in the same way, by any other man to any other woman.”
“Only perhaps by the same man to another woman,” I mocked at her, trying to act as if I were teasing in fun.
“Lisa, you can be hateful sometimes!” she cried.
“It’s only for your good, if I’m hateful now,” I said. “I don’t want to have you disappointed, when it’s too late. I want you to keep your eyes open, and see exactly where you’re going. It’s the truest thing ever said that ‘love is blind.’ You can’t deny that you’re in love with Ivor Dundas.”
“I don’t deny it,” she answered, with a proud air which would, I suppose, have made Ivor want to kiss her.