"Make the most of your rare 'good fortune.'"
"I have."
"And now that she is tired of you, you come back to me as a dernier ressort."
"Coming back to you, is like coming back home, for you have given me the only home-like feeling that I have had during my visit."
The language of coquetry was to Lottie like her mother-tongue, and she fell into it as naturally as she breathed. Only now, instead of suggesting the false hope that he had been missed and she had cared, it expressed her true feeling, for she did care.
De Forrest now returned from a momentary absence, and had it not been for his garrulity the little group would have been a rather silent one. Both young men sought to supply Lottie with the sprays of green that she was twining. She took the evergreens chiefly from De Forrest's hands, but gave her thoughts and eyes to Hemstead. He, with man's usual penetration, thought De Forrest the favored one, and was inclined to reverse his half-formed opinion that she was destined to pathetic martyrdom, because bound by an engagement to a man whom she could not love.
"He can't think much of me," thought Lottie, with a sigh, "or he couldn't speak so frankly." She, too, was losing her wonted quick discernment.
Only lynx-eyed Bel Parton partially surmised the truth, and suspected that Lottie was developing a genuine, though of course a passing interest, in the student whom at first she had purposed to beguile in mere reckless sport.
During the remainder of the afternoon and evening, De Forrest was Lottie's shadow, and she could escape him, and be with Hemstead, only by remaining with all the others. She was longing for another of their suggestive talks, when, without the restraint of the curious and unsympathetic, they could continue the theme that De Forrest had interrupted on Sunday afternoon.
She was thinking how to bring this about, when the old plan of visiting Mrs. Dlimm occurred to her, and she adopted it at once.