'Well—"if you really thought I meant it"—what would you do then? But no!' she cries hastily, seeing she has gone rather far, and unwilling to bring matters to a climax—'do not tell me; I do not wish to know. My ignorance in this case no doubt is blissful; I prefer to remain in it.—And now to change the subject. Who is Mrs Leyton? and what do you know about her? I am all curiosity where she is concerned.'
'Do you like her?' asks Blake, merely as a precautionary measure.
'I can't say I do—exactly,' replies the Irish girl candidly. 'Now tell me where you first met her.'
'In India. Her husband was alive when I first became acquainted with her. He lived tremendously hard; but he was devoted to her, without doubt, and she to him; and she took his death awfully badly. Never saw a woman so cut up by anything before; they generally take it pretty sensibly after the first shock, but she didn't; and went to a skeleton in less than three months.'
'She is not very thin now.'
'No. I suppose one can't keep on pining for ever, and in course of time good food will cover one's bones. But she felt it no end for months, and was altogether down in her luck. You see he got rather a horrible death, as his horse first threw him, and then almost trampled him beyond recognition.'
'How dreadful!' murmurs Miss Mordaunt, with a little shiver; and wonders how Mrs Leyton could ever have smiled afterwards.
'Yes; wasn't it? She took it so much to heart, that for years after she could not bear the sight of a horse, though she had the best seat in the regiment—amongst the women, I mean—and could not be induced to take a ride. Before leaving India, she sold, or gave away, every one of her horses.'
Here Cissy becomes intensely interested. 'To whom did she give them?' she asks indifferently.
'I hardly know; I was up-country at the time, but her most intimate friends, I suppose.—By-the-bye, Halkett was an immense crony of hers.'