"'We'? who are 'we'? Yes, I am seeing a good deal here to-night. As you went to see the 'other set' a few evenings ago, I also am seeing some new phases of character."
"And some new phases in one that you had a pretty good opinion of that night. I imagine you no longer consider me 'capable of the noblest things.'"
"I have not changed my mind on that point at all, but—" and here he hesitated.
"But you are discovering that I am also capable of just the reverse."
He flushed, but said gravely, "You put my thought too strongly, Miss Marsden. It would be nearer the truth, if you care for ray opinion at all, to say that I do not understand you."
She also flushed, but said a little coldly, "I am not surprised;
I scarcely understand myself."
"I find you full of puzzling contradictions," he added.
"Since I cannot contradict you, I will seek some fallible creatures like myself"; and she vanished, leaving him as uncomfortable and puzzled as ever he had been in his life.
She had scarcely entered the parlor before both De Forrest and Brently sought her hand for a waltz. The latter had disgusted her before, and now he was too tipsy for even the willing blindness of girls like Addie Marchmont, so she escaped with De Forrest, but soon found that his step was out of tune with the music, or her own mind so preoccupied that their feet made discord with the notes. Therefore she led her subservient attendant into the conservatory, and got rid of him for a time by the following ruse.
"I dropped something in the supper-room. Please find it, and look till you do."