“Well,” exclaimed Jack Jerningham at last. “You haven’t told me much about Beatriz.”
“Why should I, my dear fellow, when there’s nothing to tell?”
“Ah, I’m glad to hear that,” was his friend’s quick response, apparently much relieved, for the fascination of the handsome ballerina for Hubert Waldron was the gossip of half the Embassies of Europe. Hubert was a rising man, the son of a great diplomat, but that foolish infatuation would, if continued, most certainty stand in the way of his advancement. Many of his friends, even the Ambassador’s wife, had given him broad hints that the friendship was a dangerous one. Yet, unfortunately, he had not heeded them.
Every man who is over head and ears in love thinks that his adored one is the perfect incarnation of all the virtues. Even when Waldron had heard her discussed in the Casino, that smart club in the Calle de Alcata, he refused to credit the stories told of her, of the magnificent presents she received from admirers, and more especially from the favoured one, the septuagenarian Duke of Villaneuva y Geltru.
“Why are you so glad to hear it?” Hubert asked, his brow slightly knit, for after all it was a sore subject.
“Well, to tell you the truth, because there is so much gossip flying about.”
“What gossip?”
“Of course you know quite well. Why ask me to repeat it, old chap?”
“But I don’t,” was the other’s reply.
“Well,” exclaimed Jerningham after a pause, “perhaps you are, after all, like most men—you close your ears to the truth because you love her.”