“Saw you in the drug store just now,” he remarked.

“Yes; you were with—­”

“Bessy Van Dorn—­yes.  Pretty girl?” Eastman spoke with the insufferable air of patronizing criticism of extreme masculine youth towards the opposite sex.

“Very,” replied Anderson, dryly.

The young fellow gave a furious puff at his cigar.  The smoke came full in Anderson’s face.  “Passed here the other evening with two other young ladies while you were sitting here,” young Eastman remarked, in a curious tone.  It was full of pain, but it had a reckless, devil-may-care defiance in it also.

“Yes,” said Anderson, “I think you did.  About a week ago, wasn’t it?”

“Week ago yesterday.  Well, I suppose you’ve heard the news.  It’s all over town.”

“You mean—­”

“She’s engaged.”

Anderson felt bewildered.  “Yes?” he replied, questioningly.

“She’s engaged,” the young fellow repeated, with a sobbing sigh, which he ended in a laugh.  “They all do it, sir.”

Anderson was too puzzled to say anything.

“Suppose you’ve heard about the man?” said Eastman, in a nonchalant voice.  He inhaled the smoke from his cigar with an air of abstract enjoyment.

Anderson unassumedly stared at him.  “Why, I thought it was—­”

“Who?” asked the young fellow, eagerly.

Anderson hesitated.

“Who did you think it was?” Eastman persisted.  He had a pitiful wistfulness in his face upturned to the older man.  It became quite evident that he had a desire to hear himself named as the accepted suitor.

“Why, I thought that you were the man!” Anderson answered.

“Everybody thought so, I guess,” the young fellow said, with an absurd and childlike pride in the semblance in the midst of his grief over the reality.  “But—­” He hesitated, and Anderson waited, looking above at the play of lightning in the sky and smoking.  “She’s gone and got engaged to a man old enough to be her father.  Lord!  I guess he’s older than her father—­old enough to be her grandfather!” cried the young fellow, with a burst of grief and rage and shame.  “Yes, sir, old enough to be her grandfather,” he repeated.  His voice shook.  His cigar had gone out.  He struck a match and the head flew off.  He swore softly and struck another.  Sometimes a match refusing to ignite changes mourning to wrath and rebellion.  The third match broke short in two and the burning head flew down on the sidewalk.  “Wish I had hold of the man that made ’em,” young Eastman said, viciously; and in the same breath:  “What can the girl be thinking of, that she flings herself away like that?  Hang it all, is a woman a devil or a fool?”

Anderson removed his cigar long enough to ask a question, then replaced it.  “Who is the man?” he inquired, in a slow, odd voice.