“And, Frank! you, yourself have sometimes spoken flippantly of my regard for that girl—never so insultingly as Cabell did just now, else you would not now possess my esteem and friendship—but you have trifled with the subject. Now understand, Frank, that I shall consider it a deep personal affront in future if you repeat it!”
“You haven’t heard me joke to you about Kate for a long time.”
“No—I certainly have not.”
“No—for be hanged if the matter is not getting far too serious for jesting!”
“What do you mean?”
“Archer! Have you never heard it said that those whom it concerns first to be made acquainted with an injurious report are usually the last to hear it, and when they are innocent, they are the more exposed for being innocent, because they never suspect the slander, and never guard against it?”
“In Heaven’s name, what do you mean?”
“This. Cabell’s jest was but the echo of the whole county talk. I have been asked, I suppose, twenty times, by twenty different young men, to tell them all about our adventure upon the mountain.”
“That was because you first of all represented it as an adventure.”
“I confess it! In shame and confusion I confess it—but then many times I am also asked what is the precise nature of the relations subsisting between yourself and this girl?”