“But tell me, when is the wedding to be?” This last with obvious effort.

“You have not advised me.”

“Oh, I beg your pardon.  I meant your marriage with Ellen Meriwether.  I supposed of course you had quite forgotten me!”

“Ellen Meriwether is already married,” I said to her, with a calmness which surprised myself.  But what surprised me most was the change which came upon her face at the words—­the flush—­the gleam of triumph, of satisfaction.  I guessed this much and no more—­that she had had certain plans, and that now she had other plans, changed with lightning swiftness, and by reason of my words.

“Lieutenant Lawrence Belknap and Miss Ellen Meriwether were married, I presume, some time after I started for the East,” I went on.  “But they were never engaged before our return to the settlements.  It was all very suddenly arranged.”

“How like a story-book!  So he forgot her little incidents with you—­all summer—­side by side—­day and night!  How romantic!  I don’t know that I could have done so much, had I been a man, and myself not guilty of the same incidents.  At least, he kept his promise.”

“There had never been any promise at all between them.”

“Then Captain Orme was quite mistaken?”

“Captain Orme does not trouble himself always to be accurate.”

“At least, then, you are unmarried, Jack?”

“Yes, and likely to be for some years.”

Now her face changed once more.  Whether by plan of her own or not, I cannot say, but it softened to a more gentle—­shall I say a more beseeching look?  Was it that I again was at her side, that old associations awakened?  Or was it because she was keen, shrewd and in control of herself, able to make plans to her own advantage?  I cannot tell as to that.  But I saw her face soften, and her voice was gentle when she spoke.

“What do you mean, Jack?” she asked.

If there was not love and caress in her tones, then I could not detect the counterfeit.  I reiterate, if I should live a thousand years, I should know nothing of women, nothing.  We men are but toys with them.  As in life and in sex man is in nature’s plan no master, no chooser, but merely an incident; so, indeed, I believe that he is thus always with a woman—­only an incident.  With women we are toys.  They play with us.  We never read them.  They are the mystery of the world.  When they would deceive us it is beyond all our art to read them.  Never shall man, even the wisest, fathom the shallowest depths of a woman’s heart.  Their superiors?  God! we are their slaves, and the stronger we are as men, the more are we enslaved.

Had it been left to my judgment to pronounce, I should have called her emotion now a genuine one.  Mocking, cynical, contemptuous she might have been, and it would have suited my own mood.  But what was it now on the face of Grace Sheraton, girl of a proud family, woman I once had kissed here at this very place until she blushed—­kissed until she warmed—­until she—­