“I thought,” said Angela, with much simplicity, “that Madame Le Noir and Richard would fall in love with each other as soon as they met.”
“My dear child,” laughed Lyddon, lighting his pipe, “everybody in the world does not go about falling in love with everybody else. I will say, however, that I thought Madame Le Noir very little impressed with Richard. You know he is a man born to succeed with women. My own belief is that Madame Le Noir has another man in her mind, which makes her perfectly cool and indifferent to all the rest of the world.”
“What man is that?” asked Angela, knowing perfectly well what Lyddon’s answer would be.
“Captain Isabey, of course.”
Angela felt a strange sinking of the heart. “Do you think they’re engaged?” she asked.
“Oh, I don’t know anything about that, but I should think not! If they’re engaged, there is no reason why they should not be married. Both of them are quite old enough to know their own minds. Isabey, you know, is some years older than Richard. I should say there was no engagement, but it looks to me as if eventually Madame Le Noir and Isabey would be married.”
Angela, whose round elbows were on the table, leaned her chin upon her hands in a favorite attitude of hers, and Lyddon, who could almost see the workings of her mind, knew that from the hour she had first seen Isabey he had possessed extraordinary interest for her. He could have told the very instant that the recollection of Neville Tremaine now occurred to Angela. She had been looking down with meditative eyes upon the table, when suddenly she drew back, and glancing up, as if she were frightened and puzzled, said quickly:
“I haven’t had a letter from Neville for nearly three weeks, but I have one ready to send him. I will give it to you to-morrow.”
“Poor Neville,” said Lyddon, “his fate is hard. I never knew a man in whose honor I had greater confidence, and yet he is reckoned dishonored by those nearest to him; nor a man of stronger natural common sense, yet he has gone against the almost unanimous opinion of his own section in the United States Army. Destiny, my dear, is a queer thing.”
“Very,” answered Angela. She was thinking of another strange act of the hand of fate. No man would be less likely to coerce a woman into marrying him than Neville Tremaine; his pride, as well as his principles, would seem to make it impossible; yet deep in her own heart, Angela knew that she had been coerced. It was like one of those promises which are extorted from children never to tell an untruth, never to repeat a certain fault, a promise under compulsion and so little voluntary that it can scarcely be reckoned binding.