So it was on this morning.
He strolled into a reading-room and sat down at one of the tables and took up a paper to look at the news of the day. He had not been there more than five minutes when he heard his cousin Anna’s name mentioned in connection with his own. Impulsively he looked up and listened.
The speakers, seated at a table near, were strangers to him, as he evidently was to them, since they discussed his private affairs so freely in his hearing.
“I tell you there is not a word of truth in it. It is all a mistake. It is a false report. The beautiful Anna cares no more for young Lyon than she does for you or me. If she cares for any one on earth, it is for that handsome fellow, Dick Hammond, who has just come into a great fortune,” said the first speaker.
“That may all be quite true. I am not saying who she cares for, but who she is going to marry. She may not care a pin for Lyon, and she may adore Hammond; but for all that she must marry Lyon and give Hammond the goby, since such was the will of the two ancient landed proprietors, her grandfather and granduncle, who long ago decided that their large estates should be united,” said the second speaker.
“Well, if I were the lady’s choice, Dick Hammond, I think I should set a very serious impediment between the union of those said estates.”
“And if I were the betrothed lover, Alexander Lyon, I would break Dick’s neck for his presumption,” said the last speaker, as both arose from the table and strolled away.
Alexander’s anger and jealousy were both aroused, and his good resolutions were put to flight. He arose and followed the two speakers, but they had disappeared in the crowd.
The days of duelling are past, thank Heaven; else Alexander would have liked to have sought out and called out one or both of these male gossips and exchanged a shot with either or both of them at ten paces.
As it was he could only let his anger cool down and then acknowledge to himself that they had really neither done nor said anything very wrong. They had only unconsciously wounded his self-love and aroused his jealousy.