"You might have asked. Never mind the wax-lights," said Blanche, who, not having been long out, had a habit of saying anything that came into her head. "When did you see him? Tell me, Sydney, if she won't."
"Oh, in Canada, dear!" interrupted Cecil, quickly. "But it was for so short a time I should have thought Colonel Vivian would have forgotten my face, and name, and existence."
"Nay, Miss St. Aubyn," said Vivian, smiling. "Pardon me, but I think you must know your own power too well to think that any man who has seen you once could hope for his own peace to forget you."
The words of course were flattering, but his quizzical smile made them doubtful. Cecil evidently took them as satire. "At least, you've forgotten anything we talked about at Toronto," she said, rather impatiently, "for I remember telling you I detested compliments."
"I shouldn't have guessed it," murmured Vivian, stroking his mustaches.
"And you," Cecil went on, regardless of the interruption, "told me you never complimented any woman you respected; so that speech just now doesn't say much for your opinion of me."
"How dare I begin to like you?" laughed Vivian.
"Don't you know Levinge and Castlereagh were great friends of mine? Poor fellows! the sole object of their desires now is six feet of Crimean sod, if we're lucky enough to get out there." Cecil colored. Levinge's and Castlereagh's hard drinking and gloomy aspect at mess were popularly attributed to the witchery of the St. Aubyn. Canada, while she was in it, was as fatal to the Service as the Cape or the cholera.
"If I talked so romantically, Colonel Vivian, with what superb mockery you would curl your mustaches. Surely the Iron Hand (wasn't that your sobriquet in Caffreland?) does not believe in broken hearts?"
"Perhaps not; but I do believe in some people's liking to try and break them."