Mrs. Trelawney did not reply, but she smiled with a curiously mingled expression of triumph, pleasure, and, strange to say, disdain, rippling over her bright face—emotions to which we shall ere long have the key.
Her cheeks flushed, her lips curved with her smile, and for a moment her whole mien was that of a young girl delighted with flattery. Dalton was about to say something more, when the sudden disdain that replaced the first expression prevented him, and she said, laughingly,
'I can give the ladies a capital addition to the creed, Captain Dalton.'
'What is it?'
'Never to love any man, but make all men love you; as the song has it, "Love not—the thing you love may change;" but here come Miss Cheyne and Captain Goring.'
'A strange woman—an enigma, indeed,' thought Dalton, who had an unpleasant suspicion that she was secretly deriding the avowal he had, perhaps, been on the point of making.
'Oh, Alison,' she said, suddenly, 'you remember Bella Chevenix, the handsome, dashing girl, who always wears rich dresses, but of green or grey tints, a muslin fichu, with a yellow rose in it, and so forth. You have heard what has happened, I suppose?'
'That she was engaged, or nearly so, to Colonel Graves?'
'Yes—but he has behaved disgracefully.'
'How?'