“Did you mean your history,” asked Diana, “for the epitaph of a dead love?”
“A dead love? No! Diana, no! It was the hic jacet on the cenotaph of a hundred buried flirtations—my own and other men’s. Not all of them can chisel the inscription as coolly as I do, nor be as indulgent as I am to the memory of the names inscribed. But love! Love is undying!”
As he said this, they heard a little rustle and a sigh near them. They turned. It was Miss Milly Center. She had heard, perhaps, all the conversation. She rose and seemed about to speak, but her effort ended in something like a sob, and two rather well-made tears started and overran her cheeks.
Just then a cheerful voice came over the hill: “‘Oh, Susannah! don’t you cry for me——’” and a very shiny glazed hat with a black ribbon, such as is some men’s ideal of “the thing” for a head-piece at a water-party, appeared. This hat was on the top of Billy Dulger.
“I was looking for you, Miss Milly,” he cried, “and wondering where you had wandered to.”
“I’m very glad you have found me,” said she. “I don’t care to be third in either of these duos.”
She had whisked away her tears before she turned to answer Billy Dulger’s hail, and now with a smile she took his arm and walked away. But it was not a very happy smile.
Clara and Paulding had not perceived her presence until Dulger appeared; they were too distant to hear the conversation just interrupted, or to observe her confusion.
“Perhaps Miss Center recognised herself in the heroine of your tale,” said Diana. “Do you know the hero? It must have happened long ago. I think you have made Mr. Dulger’s fortune. He has been a faithful swain, I hear. So you think that, though flirtations may, love cannot die?”
“Diana,” he began, and it was the second time he had addressed her thus. He paused; the sun had just set. A flash and burst of white smoke shot from the ramparts of Fort Adams, across the strait. It was the sunset gun. A great, massive, booming crash came over the water, and then, eagerly, tumultuously chasing it, a throng of echoes followed.