The most dangerous lovers women have are men of Cordis's feminine temperament. Such men, by the delicacy and sensitiveness of their own organizations, read women as easily and accurately as women read each other. They are alert to detect and interpret those smallest trifles in tone, expression, and bearing, which betray the real mood far more unmistakably than more obvious signs. Cordis had seen her backward glance, and noted her steps grow slower with a complacent smile. It was this which emboldened him, in spite of the short acquaintance, to venture on the line he did.
"Good-evening, Miss Brand," he said, as he over took her. "I don't really think it's fair to begin to hurry when you hear somebody trying to overtake you.
"I'm sure I didn't mean to," she replied, glad to have a chance to tell the truth, without suspecting, poor girl, that he knew very well she was telling it.
"It isn't safe to," he said, laughing. "You can't tell who it may be. Now, it might have been Mr. Burr, instead of only me."
She understood instantly. Somebody had been telling him about Henry's attentions to her. A bitter anger, a feeling of which a moment before she would have deemed herself utterly incapable, surged up in her heart against the person, whoever it was, who had told him this. For several seconds she could not control herself to speak. Finally, she said—
"I don't understand you. Why do you speak of Mr. Burr to me?"
"I beg pardon. I should not have done so."
"Please explain what you mean.
"You'll excuse me, I hope," he said, as if quite distressed to have displeased her. "It was an unpardonable indiscretion on my part, but somebody told me, or at least I understood, that you were engaged to him."
"Somebody has told you a falsehood, then," she replied, and, with a bow of rather strained dignity turned in at the gate of a house where a moment before she had not had the remotest intention of stopping. If she had been in a boat with him, she would have jumped into the water sooner than protract the inter-view a moment after she had said that. Mechanically she walked up the path and knocked at the door. Until the lady of the house opened it, she did not notice where she had stopped.