"D'you think he cares for me any more?" asked Mary, with a rapid tremor in her voice.
"Mary!"
"Of course he does! He talks of you continually," said Colonel Parsons, "and always as if he were devoted. Doesn't he, Frances?"
The old man's deep love for Mary had prevented him from seeing in Jamie's behaviour anything incongruous with that of a true lover.
"What makes you ask that question, Mary?" said Mrs. Parsons.
Her feminine tact had led her to notice a difference in Jamie's feeling towards his betrothed; but she had been unwilling to think that it amounted even to coldness. Such a change could be explained in a hundred natural ways, and might, indeed, exist merely in her own imagination.
"Oh, he's not the same as he was!" cried Mary, "I don't know what it is, but I feel it in his whole manner. Yesterday evening he barely said a word."
James had dined with the Clibborns in solemn state.
"I daresay he's not very well yet. His wound troubles him still."
"I try to put it down to that," said Mary, "but he seems to force himself to speak to me. He's not natural. I've got an awful fear that he has ceased to care for me."