"Has she really a heart, do you think?" Lord Gordon pursues. "The fellows raved about her last season in London. She refused Greyhurst and a score of others as eligible. She must be very cold."
"I fancy so," Captain Lockhart answers, dryly. "A beautiful iceberg."
"Few women would have refused you, Lockhart. There was the beautiful Clarendon year before last, and now the charming Montgomery ready to fling herself at your head."
"Spare my modesty, Lord Gordon. You are calling in the aid of your imagination now. Cannot we have some music to beguile the moments of our last evening at Sunny Bank?"
They pass away to another portion of the room.
Lady Vera sits silent, brooding over the words she has heard.
"How coolly they discussed their rejection," she thinks. "Lord Gordon wondered if I had a heart. Captain Lockhart called me a beautiful iceberg. Perhaps he does not care much. How carelessly he said that he was a soldier and expected wounds upon the field of battle. Perhaps he does not mind it, now that it is over. I remember that one of the poets has written:
"Man's love is of man's life a thing apart,
'Tis woman's whole existence."
The moon comes out and shines upon her, sitting sad and lonely, with her white hands folded across her black dress. Two quiet tears tremble upon her lashes, and fall upon her cheeks.
"If I were a fatalist," she thinks, "I should believe that my life is destined to lie always in the shadow. I have never known an hour of perfect happiness."