“Because Lulie has changed so in her conduct towards me. She has been very reserved and formal with me since you left, and rarely visits me.”
“Has Frank been paying her much attention this vacation?” I asked, taking a sip of the cordial that stood by my bed.
“I have not had many opportunities for observing,” she replied, driving her stiletto through a floss flower on her embroidery; “but I have seen them together many times, and gossip says they are very much devoted. Perhaps it is at his request she has withdrawn her intimacy from me.”
“No doubt of it,” I replied; “she is perfectly infatuated, and he cares nothing whatever for her, except as a conquest to boast of. I heard him read one of her letters to a crowd in his room one night, and tell of liberties he had taken.”
Her dark eyes opened with a flash of indignant astonishment as she exclaimed, energetically:
“And she trusts to such perfidy! I’ll warn her, if she spurns me, for we have been fond friends. But no,” she added, after a pause; “that would implicate you, and perhaps lead to another affray.”
“I don’t care,” I said, punching in the end of the pillow, as if it were Frank’s head; “tell her by all means. I would go to her myself, but she would think it was an invention of my own to supersede Frank in her favor.”
“I hear Mrs. Smith coming up stairs,” said Carlotta, folding up her work; “and as it is late in the afternoon I’ll run over to Dr. Mayland’s and have a good long talk with Lulie, and get back in time to bring up your tea.”
“Bless your dear heart, how I love you!” I murmured, as I watched her tucking back the curtains and setting everything to rights ere she tripped from the room. I could not help instituting a comparison between her and Miss Carrover, and I could find only one point in the latter’s favor: that she was a grown lady, who had seen much of society, while Carlotta was, to my college dignity, only a child—too often present for the romantic sigh, and too constantly near for the heart-throb when I met her.
And, in thinking of Lillian, the faint shadow of a demon thought began to flit across my mind. The baseness of its ingratitude made me shudder as I shrank from it; yet it gradually grew, ever lurking deep down in my heart, as it whispered, through the reveries of the day and the dreams of the night, “Lillian can love you now; Ramie is dead.”