"Then there is not a shadow of a doubt left. He knows I am here. He has forgotten me so totally, and is so completely indifferent, that he comes here and pays attention to another who is in the very same house with me. It is hard. Oh, Kitty, is it not? Is it not bitter? How could I have thought this of him?"
A high-hearted girl was Ethel, and a proud one; but at this final confirmation of her worst fears there burst from her a sharp cry, and she buried her face in her hands, and moaned and wept.
[ CHAPTER XII.]
GIRASOLE AGAIN.
One day Mrs. Willoughby and Minnie were out driving. Hawbury was riding by the carriage on the side next Minnie, when suddenly their attention was arrested by a gentleman on horseback who was approaching them at an easy pace, and staring hard at them. Minnie's hand suddenly grasped her sister's arm very tightly, while her color came and went rapidly.
"Oh dear!" sighed Mrs. Willoughby.
"Oh, what shall I do?" said Minnie, in a hasty whisper. "Can't we pretend not to see him?"
"Nonsense, you little goose," was the reply. "How can you think of such rudeness?"
By this time the gentleman had reached them, and Mrs. Willoughby stopped the carriage, and spoke to him in a tone of gracious suavity, in which there was a sufficient recognition of his claims upon her attention, mingled with a slight hauteur that was intended to act as a check upon his Italian demonstrativeness.