"Pardon," Laurel murmured, faintly, and she recalled to herself, as she often did, Clarice's favorite song of "Dollars and Dimes."
"It is all right. The old man died soon, and left me a fortune," said the young widow, heartlessly. "But as for loving him, or having any sentimental tendresse over his memory—pshaw, I am not such a little simpleton as that, my dear! no one could expect it," plaintively. "Beatrix," this with startling suddenness—"tell me what do you think of your host—of St. Leon Le Roy?"
[CHAPTER XX.]
The change of conversation was so sudden that Laurel started and shivered uncomfortably.
"Are you cold, my dear?" asked Maud Merivale.
"I felt chilly for a moment," Laurel answered. "It does not matter. You were saying—"
"I asked you what you thought of St. Leon Le Roy, Beatrix. Is he not"—enthusiastically—"grand, handsome, noble—a very king among men?"
Little thrills of icy coldness shot along Laurel's tingling nerves. She remembered his cold, proud bearing to her, as contrasted with his winning and tender demeanor to Maud Merivale that evening. She answered with impulsive bitterness:
"He may be all that to you, Mrs. Merivale, but to me he has always seemed cold, hard, stern!"