Elizabeth said nothing for a few steps, then she remarked rather abruptly—
“Well, he is not what you’d call an eager hunter, exactly.”
Norah stopped dead.
“You don’t mean to tell me he hasn’t proposed to you? We were all sure he had done, and that you were now behaving to him like a sister.” She broke off, and looked at her sister with her odd, mocking little smile. “That would be so exactly like you, Elizabeth.”
“He has not proposed to me—if that is what you want to know.”
“How odd!” said Norah.
“Why odd?” said Elizabeth, with some pardonable asperity. “I don’t expect every young man I meet to propose to me.”
“Of course not,” said Norah. “And now he has these girls within reach, I expect he will not be always making excuses to come over here. I dare say he was dull, and no wonder. And after all, you are not so unused to admiration that you would feel the loss of one young man, would you? Even if he did prove faithless?”
“I think I can exist without Mr. Deane, if that is what you mean,” said Elizabeth, marching on with her head in the air.