“You have been delightfully attentive to your wife, this evening, my dear,” said Mrs. Cunningham to her husband, as soon as they were seated in their carriage on their way home.
“I am not sensible of having neglected you, Lucy,” said Mr. Cunningham.
“No—I suppose not; nor of having been very attentive to another!”
“I certainly am not. To whom do you allude?”
“I suppose,” said Mrs. Cunningham, “that Mr. Westbury is equally unconscious of having had his attention engrossed by any particular individual.”
“You surely cannot mean that I was particularly attentive to Miss Eldon, Lucy?”
“O, how could I mean so?” said Mrs. Cunningham, with a kind of laugh that expressed any thing rather than pleasure, or good humor. “I really wonder how you came to recollect having seen such a person as Miss Eldon to-night!”
“Your remark concerning Westbury brought her to my mind,” said Mr. Cunningham.
“How strange!” said his wife, “And how extreme that young lady's mortification must have been, that she could not detain two newly married gentlemen near her for more than an hour and a half at one time! Seriously, Mr. Cunningham, the company must have thought that you and Westbury were striving which should do her most homage.”
“And seriously, my dear Lucy,” said Mr. Cunningham, taking the hand of his wife, which she reluctantly permitted him to detain—“seriously, it was merely accidental that I spoke to Miss Eldon this evening. There is not a person on earth to whose society and conversation I am more completely indifferent—so, take no offence, love, where none was meant. There is no one whose conversation can compensate me for the loss of yours; and it is one reason why I so much dislike these crowds, that, for a time, they necessarily separate us from each other.”