"No—no—if you please—don't!" said Nina, putting up her hand to stop him. "Just wait till you hear what I have to say. I believe you did not get a letter which I wrote you a few days ago, did you?"
"A letter! no, indeed. How unfortunate!"
"Very unfortunate for me!" said Nina; "and for you, too. Because, if you had, it would have saved you and me the trouble of this interview. I wrote that letter to tell you, Mr. Carson, that I cannot think of such a thing as an engagement with you! That I've acted very wrong and very foolishly; but that I cannot do it. In New York, where everybody and everything seemed to be trifling, and where the girls all trifled with these things, I was engaged—just for frolic—nothing more. I had no idea what it would amount to; no idea what I was saying, nor how I should feel afterwards. But every hour since I've been home, here, since I've been so much alone, has made me feel how wrong it is. Now, I'm very sorry, I'm sure. But I must speak the truth, this time. But it is—I can't tell you how—disagreeable to me to have you treat me as you have since you've been here!"
"Miss Gordon!" said Mr. Carson, "I am positively astonished! I—I don't know what to think!"
"Well, I only want you to think that I am in earnest; and that, though I can like you very well as an acquaintance, and shall always wish you well, yet anything else is just as far out of the question as that moon there is from us. I can't tell you how sorry I am that I've made you all this trouble. I really am," said she, good-naturedly; "but please now to understand how we stand." She turned, and tripped away.
"There!" said she, to herself, "at any rate, I've done one thing!"
Mr. Carson stood still, gradually recovering from the stupor into which this communication had thrown him. He stretched himself, rubbed his eyes, took out his watch and looked at it, and then began walking off with a very sober pace in the opposite direction from Nina. Happily-constituted mortal that he was, nothing ever could be subtracted from his sum of complacence that could not be easily balanced by about a quarter of an hour's consideration. The walk through the shrubbery in which he was engaged was an extremely pretty one, and wound along on the banks of the river through many picturesque points of view, and finally led again to the house by another approach. During the course of this walk Mr. Carson had settled the whole question for himself. In the first place, he repeated the comfortable old proverb, that there were as good fish in the sea as ever were caught. In the second place, as Mr. Carson was a shrewd business-man, it occurred to him, in this connection, that the plantation was rather run down, and not a profitable acquisition. And, in the third place, contemplating Nina as the fox of old did his bunch of sour grapes, he began to remember that, after all, she was dressy, expensive, and extravagant. Then, as he did not want that imperturbable good-nature which belongs to a very shallow capability of feeling, he said to himself that he shouldn't like the girl a bit the less. In fact, when he thought of his own fine fortune, his house in New York, and all the accessories which went to make up himself, he considered her, on the whole, as an object of pity; and, by the time that he ascended the balcony steps again, he was in as charitable and Christian a frame as any rejected suitor could desire.
He entered the drawing-room. Aunt Nesbit had ordered candles, and was sitting up with her gloves on, alone. What had transpired during his walk, he did not know; but we will take our readers into confidence.
Nina returned to the house with the same decided air with which she went out, and awakened Mr. Clayton from a reverie with a brisk little tap of her fan on his shoulder.
"Come up here with me," she said, "and look out of the library window, and see this moonlight."