“The Land of Afternoon was too strong for him. Shall you really pine much for Miss Ogilvie, Infanta?”
“I shall miss her dreadfully,” said Babie, “and I think it is very stupid of her to leave mother, whom she has known all her life, and all of us, for a strange man she never saw till four months ago.”
“Oh, Babie, you to be the author of a chivalrous romance!” said Fordham.
“I was young and silly then,” said the young lady, who was within a month of sixteen.
“And all your romances are to be henceforth without love,” said Armine.
“I think they would be much more sensible,” said Babie. “Why do you all laugh so? Don’t you see how stupid poor Allen always is? And it can even spoil Miss Ogilvie, and make her inattentive.”
“Poor Allen,” echoed one or two voices, in the same low tone, for as they peeped out beyond the orange-tree, Allen might be seen, extended on a many-coloured rug, in an exceedingly deplorable attitude.
“O yes,” said Sydney; “but if one has such a—such a—such an object as that, one must expect to be stupid and miserable sometimes!”
“She must have been worrying him again,” said Babie.
“O yes, didn’t you see?” said Armine. “No, I remember you didn’t go out riding early to-day.”