"Shows how little you can tell about it. By the same reasoning, I suppose you do not know me much?"
"No," said Dolly. "Yes, I do! I know you a great deal, in some things. If I didn't"—— she flushed up.
"We both know enough to begin with; is that it? Do you remember, that evening, Christmas Eve, how you sat by the corner of the fireplace and kept quiet, while Miss Thayer talked?"
"Yes." Dolly remembered it very well.
"You wore a black dress, and no ornaments, and the firelight shone on a cameo ring on your hand, and on your face, and the curls of your hair, and every now and then caught this," said Mr. Shubrick, touching Dolly's chain. "Christina talked, and I studied you."
"One evening," said Dolly.
"One evening; but I was reading what was not written in an evening. However, I left Christina's objection unanswered—though I do not allow that it is unanswerable; and waited. She needed a little while to come to her breath."
"Poor Christina!" said Dolly.
"Not at all; it was poor Sandie, if anybody. I do not think Christina suffered, more than a little natural and very excusable mortification. She never loved me. I had guessed as much before, and I was relieved now to find that I had been certainly right. But she needed a little while to get her breath, nevertheless. She asked me if I was serious? then, why I did not tell her sooner? I replied that I had had a great fight to fight before I could make up my mind to tell her at all.
"And then, as I judge, she had something of a fight to go through. She turned her face away from me, and sat silent. I did not interrupt her; and we floated so a good while on the coloured sea. I do not believe she knew what the colours were; but I did, I confess. I had got a weight off my mind. The bay of Sorrento was very lovely to me that evening. After a good while, Christina turned to me again, and I could see that she was all taut and right now. She began with a compliment to me."