"I have nothing more to tell," replied Ned, feeling the situation becoming embarrassing.
"I forgot something else," added the girl, in a light manner, that sent the shivers down the back of young Minturn, for his instinct told him what was coming. "You can't ask me to tell you all the bad words Colonel Butler used."
"Not unless you would like to go over them, but let me know what it was that caused him to speak in that style?"
"Oh! but he had good cause for it all, for that wicked Captain Bagley told him there was a young gentleman somewhere that thought all the world of me, and of whom I thought all the world, and the idea that I liked anybody else besides him was what made him so angry. I believe you have all now."
"Yes, I believe I have," replied Jo, with a low laugh. "Jack and I were standing almost as close to them as were you and Ned, and we heard their conversation."
If the pretty sister had possessed a parasol, she would have made her brother's head feel the weight thereof. All this was pure jest that seemed to intrude itself by a law of physiology into the hearts oppressed so long by grief, dread and anxiety. But there was one heart upon which the airy words fell with a weight of which the speakers never dreamed. To Ned Clinton there was something cruel in this reference to his affection for Rosa. He considered it a sacred secret—perhaps dimly suspected now by Rosa herself—too sacred, indeed, to be spoken of in jest by others.
He knew that his friends meant no unkindness, but it touched him scarcely the less for all that. He and Rosa had passed a few deep, earnest words, bearing upon that dream of the future which he cherished so fondly, and not the words merely, but the tones, the manner and the occasion gave them a significance which was of the profoundest import to him; and now to hear the maiden refer to them as she did pained him. Was it, then, all a jest to her? Did she regard the picture he had faintly limned as one of those unsubstantial dreams which the young and ambitious are so fond of drawing, and which can never be realized? Did she look upon him merely as a friend—a dear one, perhaps, whom she had known and liked from their early childhood, because they had been schoolmates, and he and her brother were friends?
In short, was it not evidence that she merely liked, but felt nothing at all of love—that great over-mastering emotion that pervaded and swayed his whole nature?