"Then you are no true woman."
"What! must a woman be so foolishly romantic as to tremble in the moonlight, to be true?"
"Moonlights differ. There is a witchery abroad to-night. Go, and judge for yourself if there be not truth in my words."
"I can see enough of it from this," says Monica, leaning her bare snowy arms—from which her loose sleeves have fallen—upon the window-ledge, and turning her eyes to the pale sky studded with bright stars, "to bewitch me, if indeed it has the power you ascribe to it."
Foiled in her first effort to send her to Desmond's arms, Kit flings herself upon the ground beside her, and lays her arms upon her lap and looks lovingly but reproachfully into her eyes.
"I think you were a little unkind to that dear Brian this evening," she says.
"That dear Brian will recover from my cruel treatment, I make no doubt," says Monica, with affected lightness, though, in truth, remorse is gnawing at her heartstrings.
"If he does, he will show his very good sense. He loves you: why, then, do you flout and scorn him?"
In the ancient library below, the young ladies in the novels always flouted their lovers. Not having the faintest idea how they perform this arduous task, Kit still adopts the word as having a sonorous sound, and uses it now with—as she hopes—great effect.
"I do not flout him," says Monica, indignantly. "But what am I to do? am I to make Aunt Priscilla wretched, then, because of him, and break her poor heart perhaps?"