"'Why not?' I asked, surprised.
"She looked at me with peculiar significance, but remained silent.
"'May I ask why not?' I asked.
"'Because, if you do, somebody may be jealous.' There was a laughing defiance in her eye as she spoke.
"'And pray, who has a right to be jealous of me?'
"'Oh! you know well enough.'
"It was true; I did know; and she knew that I knew it. To my shame be it said that I was weak enough to yield to an equivocation which I now see to have been disloyal, but which I then pretended to have been no more than delicacy to Ottilie. As, in point of fact, there had never been a word passed between us respecting our mutual feelings, I considered myself bound in honor to assume that there was nothing tacitly acknowledged.
"Piqued by her tone and look, I disavowed the existence of any claims upon my attention; and to prove the sincerity of my words, I persisted in addressing my attentions to her. Once or twice I fancied I caught flying glances, in which some of the company criticised my conduct, and Ottilie also seemed to me unusually quiet. But her manner, though quiet, was untroubled and unchanged. I talked less to her than usual, partly because I talked so much to Agalma, and partly because I felt that Agalma's eyes were on us. But no shadow of 'temper' or reserve darkened our interchange of speech.
"On our way back, I know not what devil prompted me to ask Agalma whether she had really been in earnest in her former allusion to 'somebody.'
"'Yes,' she said, 'I was in earnest then.'