"I hardly care to know," she answers, with pretty unconcern.
"Hardly care to know—now, really? I shall tell you anyhow. Well, she is an heiress; is pretty; in her second Washington season; father in the banking business, and Fontenay, despairing of winning you, has transferred his 'young affections' to her. She rather likes him—will marry him, perhaps, but then——"
"But then?"
"She likes me, too, and I have teased the gallant captain considerably. Oh, the drives I have had with the fair Cordelia, the gas-light flirtations; the morning strolls to the capitol; the art-gallery; everywhere, in short, where you went with the major. I am not sure but she would throw him over for me altogether."
Her heart sinks within her. Has his fickle love turned from her so soon to this "fair Cordelia?" Better so, perhaps, for her in the end; but now—oh! she has never loved him so well as at this moment, sitting beside her in his dusk patrician beauty, with a certain odd earnestness underlying his flippant manner.
"Mrs. Conway is well, I hope?" she says, to change that painful conversation.
"Is well?—yes, and misses you amid the gay scenes of the capital. What have you been doing secluded here in your quiet home, little saint?"
"Oh! nothing particularly."
"You have not been falling in love, have you?"