"So I perceive," and she still laughed provokingly.
"May I ask if you have not been engaged all along to Lieutenant Matson?"
"No."
"When was it broken off?"
"It never was made."
Fernando turned his face away to hide his confusion and said half aloud:
"Have I been a fool all along? If it was not the lieutenant, then who in the name of reason was it?" The roguish creature seemed really to enjoy this discomfiture. Fernando's cheek had never blanched in battle, but in the presence of this little maiden he was a coward. After several efforts in which he found the old malady of something rising in his throat returning, he said:
"But, Morgianna, was he not your lover?"
"No, he was father's friend; but I could never love him, though I treated him respectfully." She was serious now.
"Then, Morgianna, who was it?" he asked impulsively. She was silent. He waited but a second or two and went on. "Some one surely stood in the way of our--my happiness. I had hoped that you did not despise me. I scarce dared to think you loved me, but it was some one,--who stood in my way?"