“You are very cruel,” I continued in the same undertone.

“You don’t care if I am,” she said a little bitterly.

“As if I do not care when you use me badly!  Won’t you tell me what is the matter?” I asked tenderly.

“Oh, Mr. Highrank, I am so unhappy!” she whispered.

“Why so, my dear?” No one could help calling Eva “my dear”; besides, we were hidden by the heavy window curtain and no one overheard us.

“I—­I—­am going to be married,” she said.

“It appears to me that ought to make you particularly merry, oughtn’t it?”

“But it don’t,” she answered, sighing.

“Why not, you foolish girl?”

“Oh, everything is so different from what I expected.”

“In what way?”

“W-h-y,” she answered slowly, “I thought it would be romantic, and that he would ask me in the moonlight.”

“Like to-night, for instance?” I said, taking her hand and drawing her through the low window on to the piazza.

“Yes,” she replied, “and instead of that—­”

“Well, instead of that?” I repeated, seeing she paused.

“Instead of that, it was in that old parlor of ours.  I have never had a nice time since we took it two weeks ago, odious green place!  I detest green furniture; it is so unbecoming,” she said pathetically.

“And who is the happy dog—­I mean gentleman’—­Eva?  I may call you Eva, just for this evening yet, mayn’t I?”

“I don’t care if—­if—­Oh my! what a name!  Charley, did you ever hear such a dreadful name as David?”

“What! old Todd?  It isn’t old Todd?” I asked, laughing.

“It is very unkind of you to laugh when you know I must marry him.”

“I won’t laugh,” I said, putting her arm in mine and walking down the verandah.  “Come, sit on this sofa and tell me all about it.”

“Well,” she said, half pouting and half crying, “I must marry some one this season—­both mamma and auntie say so—­and I can’t marry Ned.”

“Ned Hardcash?  You don’t mean to say he was spooney on you?”

“Yes he was, but I told him he was too poor.”

“You are very reasonable, Eva.”

“You need not talk that way.  Mamma would not hear of it.  I could not let him ask her, for she would have been so angry, and she and auntie would have scolded me; and you don’t know how fearfully auntie can abuse one when she begins.”

“How did Ned take your answer?”

“Oh, he just went away, and did not care a bit, and I have not seen him since.”

“He did not care?” thinking I now had the clew to Ned’s savage manner for the week past.  “When did it happen?”

“I can’t exactly remember:  it was soon after we took the parlor.  Auntie would not let me invite him there, and he got angry and jealous of Mr. Todd, who was with me all the time, and—­”

“But that showed he loved you, don’t you think so?”