'Say it out frankly, Kate,' cried Nina, as with flashing eyes and heightened colour she paced the drawing-room from end to end, with that bold sweeping stride which in moments of pa.s.sion betrayed her. 'Say it out.

I know perfectly what you are hinting at.'

'I never hint,' said the other gravely; 'least of all with those I love.'

'So much the better. I detest an equivoque. If I am to be shot, let me look the fire in the face.'

'There is no question of shooting at all. I think you are very angry for nothing.'

'Angry for nothing! Do you call that studied coldness you have observed towards me all day yesterday nothing? Is your ceremonious manner--exquisitely polite, I will not deny--is that nothing? Is your chilling salute when we met--I half believe you curtsied--nothing? That you shun me, that you take pains not to keep my company, never to be with me alone is past denial.'

'And I do not deny it,' said Kate, with a voice of calm and quiet meaning.

'At last, then, I have the avowal. You own that you love me no longer.'

'No, I own nothing of the kind: I love you very dearly; but I see that our ideas of life are so totally unlike, that unless one should bend and conform to the other, we cannot blend our thoughts in that harmony which perfect confidence requires. You are so much above me in many things, so much more cultivated and gifted--I was going to say civilised, and I believe I might--'

'Ta--ta--ta,' cried Nina impatiently. 'These flatteries are very ill-timed.'

'So they would be, if they were flatteries; but if you had patience to hear me out, you'd have learned that I meant a higher flattery for myself.'

'Don't I know it? don't I guess?' cried the Greek. 'Have not your downcast eyes told it? and that look of sweet humility that says, "At least I am not a flirt?"'

'Nor am I,' said Kate coldly.

'And I am! Come now, do confess. You want to say it.'

'With all my heart I wish you were not!' And Kate's eyes swam as she spoke.

'And what if I tell you that I know it--that in the very employment of the arts of what you call coquetry, I am but exercising those powers of pleasing by which men are led to frequent the salon instead of the cafe, and like the society of the cultivated and refined better than--'

'No, no, no!' burst in Kate. 'There is no such mock principle in the case.

You are a flirt because you like the homage it secures you, and because, as you do not believe in such a thing as an honest affection, you have no scruple about trifling with a man's heart.'

'So much for captivating that bold hussar,' cried Nina.

'For the moment I was not thinking of him.'

'Of whom, then?'

'Of that poor Captain Curtis, who has just ridden away.'

'Oh, indeed!'

'Yes. He has a pretty wife and three nice little girls, and they are the happiest people in the world. They love each other, and love their home--so, at least, I am told, for I scarcely know them myself.'

'And what have I done with _him_?'

'Sent him away sad and doubtful--very doubtful if the happiness he believed in was the real article after all, and disposed to ask himself how it was that his heart was beating in a new fashion, and that some new sense had been added to his nature, of which he had no inkling before. Sent him away with the notes of a melody floating through his brain, so that the merry laugh of his children will be a discord, and such a memory of a soft glance, that his wife's bright look will be meaningless.'

'And I have done all this? Poor me!'

'Yes, and done it so often, that it leaves no remorse behind it.'

'And the same, I suppose, with the others?'

'With Mr. Walpole, and d.i.c.k, and Mr. O'Shea, and Mr. Atlee too, when he was here, in their several ways.'

'Oh, in theirs, not in mine, then?'

'I am but a bungler in my explanation. I wished to say that you adapted your fascinations to the tastes of each.'

'What a siren!'

'Well, yes--what a siren; for they're all in love in some fashion or other; but I could have forgiven you these, had you spared the married man.'

'So you actually envy that poor prisoner the gleam of light and the breath of cold air that comes between his prison bars--that one moment of ecstasy that reminds him how he once was free and at large, and no manacles to weigh him down? You will not let him even touch bliss in imagination? Are _you_ not more cruel than _me_?'

'This is mere nonsense,' said Kate boldly. 'You either believe that man was fooling _you_, or that you have sent him away unhappy? Take which of these you like.'

'Can't your rustic nature see that there is a third case, quite different from both, and that Harry Curtis went off believing--'

'Was he Harry Curtis?' broke in Kate.

'He was dear Harry when I said good-bye,' said Nina calmly.

'Oh, then, I give up everything--I throw up my brief.'

'So you ought, for you have lost your cause long ago.'

'Even that poor Donogan was not spared, and Heaven knows he had troubles enough on his head to have pleaded some pity for him.'

'And is there no kind word to say of _me_, Kate?'

'O Nina, how ashamed you make me of my violence, when I dare to blame you!

but if I did not love you so dearly, I could better bear you should have a fault.'

'I have only one, then?'

'I know of no great one but this. I mean, I know of none that endangers good-nature and right feeling.'

'And are you so sure that this does? Are you so sure that what you are faulting is not the manner and the way of a world you have not seen? that all these levities, as you would call them, are not the ordinary wear of people whose lives are pa.s.sed where there is more tolerance and less pain?'

'Be serious, Nina, for a moment, and own that it was by intention you were in the approach when Captain Curtis rode away: that you said something to him, or looked something--perhaps both--on which he got down from his horse and walked beside you for full a mile?'

'All true,' said Nina calmly. 'I confess to every part of it.'

'I'd far rather that you said you were sorry for it.'

'But I am not; I'm very glad--I'm very proud of it.