'That you are in love with mamma. Is it so?'
Strange to say, at this remark Dalton grew very pale, while Mrs. Trelawney, though she coloured considerably, laughed excessively at the situation thus created, but was rather surprised that Dalton failed to take advantage of it, even to pay her, as he could easily have done, a well-turned compliment.
'Netty seems to have quite a matrimonial interest in you, Captain Dalton,' said she, still laughing.
'Yes; she has more than once asked me if I ever had a wife.'
Mrs. Trelawney, while her own bright eyes were partly hidden by the shade on the globe of the lamp, was keenly scrutinizing the half-averted face of her admirer.
'You have not been always a woman-hater?' she asked.
'I never was—far from it—the reverse,' said he, hastily.
'And yet in all those years you have never fallen in love?'
'I never thought of it till I came back to England. One does not think of marriage up country in the land of brown squaws.'
'And so you never thought of it?'