She smiled with unruffled amiability. "I am an exception," she said. "I am neither of her kind nor, thank Goodness! of Tier country; and I have never seen the man I cared to flirt with. I am more particular than most people, and more exclusive. Besides," with the most matter-of-fact air in the world, "I am an old maid by nature and destiny. I am preparing for my métier too steadily to interrupt it by the vulgar amusement of flirting."
"You an old maid!—you! nonsense!" cried Edgar with an odd expression in his eyes. "You will not be an old maid, Adelaide, I would marry you myself rather."
She chose to take his impertinence simply. "Would you?" she asked. "That would be generous!"
"And unpleasant?" he returned in a lower voice.
"To you? chi sa? I should say yes." She spoke quite quietly, as if nothing deeper than the question and answer of the moment lay under this crossing of swords.
"No, not to me," he returned.
"To me, then? I will tell you that when the time comes," she said. "Things are not always what they seem."
"You speak in riddles to-night, fair lady," said Edgar, who honestly did not know what she meant him to infer—whether her present seeming indifference was real, or the deeper feeling which she had so often and for so long allowed him to believe.
"Do I?" She looked into his face serenely, but a little irritatingly. "Then my spoken riddles match your acted ones," she said.
"This is the first time that I have been accused of enigmatic action. Of all men I am the most straightforward, the least dubious."