“Marie, Marie!”
“It’s true, Margaret!—Now, Beatrice, dost thou not think so? She makes a regular misery of it. There is no living with her for a day or two before he comes to see her. She never gives him a minute’s peace when he is here; and if he looks at somebody else, she goes as black as a thunder-cloud. If he’s half an hour late, she’s quite sure he is visiting some other gentlewoman, whom he loves better than he loves her. She’s for ever making little bits of misery out of nothing. If he were to call her ‘honey-sweet Eva’ to-day, and only ‘sweet Eva’ to-morrow, she would be positive there was some shocking reason for it, instead of, like a sensible girl, never thinking about it in that way at all.”
Beatrice and Doucebelle were both laughing, and even Margaret joined in a little.
“Of course,” said Marie by way of postscript, “if Sir William had been badly hurt in a tournament, or anything of that sort, I could understand her worrying about it: or if he had told her that he did not love her, I could understand that: but she worries for nothing at all! If he does not tell her that he loves her every time he comes, she fancies he doesn’t.”
“Marie, don’t be so silly!”
“Thanks, I’ll try not,” said Marie keenly. “And she calls that love! What dost thou think, Beatrice?”
“Why, I think it does not sound much like it, Marie—in thy description.”
“Why, what notion of love hast thou?” said Eva scornfully. “I have not forgotten how thou wert wont to talk of thy betrothed.”
“But I never professed to love Leo,” said Beatrice, looking up. “How could I, when I had not seen him?”
“Dost thou want to see, in order to love?” sentimentally inquired Eva.