"Not at all, Newton."
"But it makes you turn your face away."
"You met often, I believe, before you came here?"
"Oh, very often. I used to see her at the cathedral every Sunday in Canterbury; at the balls at Rochester and Maidstone——"
"And in London?"
"Repeatedly! I saw her at her first presentation at Court, when the colonel presented me, on obtaining my lieutenancy, and returning from foreign service. She created quite a sensation!"
I spoke in such glowing terms of my admiration for Louisa Loftus, that some time elapsed before I detected the extreme pallor of Cora's cheek, and a peculiar quivering of her under lip.
"Good heavens, my dear girl, you are ill! It is this confounded cigar—one of a box that Willie got me in Dunfermline," I exclaimed, throwing it away. "Your hand is trembling, too."
"Is it? Oh, no! Stay! I am only a little faint," she murmured.
"Faint! Why the deuce should you be faint, Cora?"