'Unexplained; it might not have been.'
'How?'
'You forget the rejected correspondence—the last unopened letter.'
'Anyway,' replied Annabelle, with a forced laugh, 'unlike the Grande Duchesse, I shall no longer dote upon the military. I'll look out for an easy-going parson, or plain country gentleman, and, as Hawley Smart says, "more weddings take place from pique than the world wotteth of," and Hawley is right.' Then, dropping this tone, she twined her white arms round her friend, and, gazing into her soft face, said, 'Dear Mary, how poorly you are looking!'
'Well, have I not had much cause for anxiety, and tears too, think you?'
'No man, I believe now, is worth the grief that robs a woman of her peace and rest.'
'Oh, Annabelle, the thought of Leslie Fotheringhame embitters you; but I sorrow for Cecil—and there are men and men, remember. How strange it seems that now I must think and speak of him not as Falconer (his mother's name), but as Cecil Montgomerie!' she added, with a soft smile, gazing on vacancy.
'I thought,' said Annabelle, after a pause, 'that I should have died when dear old Sir Piers so awkwardly asked me to sing that stupid song to-night—died of shame and mortification! Surely no woman has ever been more thoroughly humbled than I! How unfortunate all this is!' she added, almost weeping with vexation; 'mamma knew of our engagement, and that he is my cousin. She knows how shamefully he treated me after the night of that most unlucky ball; and all about that—that person—the woman with the golden-hazel eyes; and how shall I be able to convince her, proud, resentful, and justly-suspicious as she is, that our meeting here is a miserable coincidence—a circumstance beyond my control?'
'It looks like Fate, my dear Belle.'
'Fate? How can you romance so after all that has happened?'