“Indeed! I scarcely suspected Sir Gordon had more than remembered me.”
“I did not say that Grandpapa was my informant,” said she, laughing. “Lady Catherine Douglas—the Collingwoods—the Grevilles—and then that delightful person, Madame de Favancourt,—all spoke of you.... For which of my catalogue was that blush intended, Mr. Templeton?”
“I was only yielding to a very natural sentiment—call it shame, pride, or pleasure—that so many fair friends should have deemed me worthy a place in their memory. Is Mary Greville married?”
“Yes; about a month since she accepted the hand she had, it is said, some half-dozen times rejected.”
“Sir Blake Morony?”
“The same: an intolerable bore, to my thinking; and, indeed, I believe to poor Mary’s, too. But, then, ‘the’ man did not offer. Some say, he was bashful; some, that he dreaded what he need not have dreaded—a refusal; and so, Mary went but to the Cape when her father became Governor there; and, like all governors’ daughters, took a husband from the staff.”
“She was very pretty, but——”
“Say on; we were never more than mere acquaintances.”
“I was going to add, a most inveterate flirt.”
“How I do detest to hear that brought as an accusation against a girl, from the very kind of person that invariably induces the error!—Young men like Mr. Templeton, who, entering life with the prestige of ability and public success, very naturally flatter the vanity of any girl by their attentions, and lead to a more buoyant character of mind and a greater desire to please, which are at once set down as coquetry. For my own part, I greatly prefer old men’s society to young one’s, from the very fact that one is permitted to indulge all the caprices of thought or fancy without incurring the offensive imputation of a design on his heart.”