“Eve, dear, I have no good news for you.  Your words have come true.  I have been perplexed, up and down, hot and cold, till I feel sometimes like going mad.  Eve, I cannot fathom her.  She is deeper than the ocean, and more changeable.  What am I saying? the sea and the wind; they are to be read; they have their signs and their warnings; but she—­”

“There! there! that is the old song.  I tell you it is only a girl—­a creature as shallow as a puddle, and as easy to fathom, as you call it, only men are so stupid, especially boys.  Now just you tell me all she has said, all she has done, and all she has looked, and I will turn her inside out like a glove in a minute.”

Cheered by this audacious pledge, David pumped upon Eve all that has trickled on my readers, and some minor details besides, and repeated Lucy’s every word, sweet or bitter, and recalled her lightest action—­Meminerunt omnia amantes—­and every now and then he looked sadly into Eve’s keen little face for his doom.

She heard him in silence until the last fatal incident, Lucy’s severity on the lawn.  Then she put in a question.  “Were those her exact words?”

“Do I ever forget a syllable she says to me?”

“Don’t be angry.  I forgot what a ninny she has made of you.  Well, David, it is all as plain as my hand.  The girl likes you—­that is all.”

“The girl likes me?  What do you mean?  How can you say that?  What sign of liking is there?”

“There are two.  She avoids you, and she has been rude to you.”

“And those are signs of liking, are they?” said David, bitterly.

“Why, of course they are, stupid.  Tell me, now, does she shun this Captain Keely?”

“Kenealy.  No.”

“Does she shun Mr. Harvey?”

“Hardie.  No.”

“Does she shun Mr. Talboys?”

“Oh Eve, you break my heart—­no! no!  She shuns no one but poor David.”

“Now think a little.  Here are three on one sort of footing, and one on a different footing; which is likeliest to be the man, the one or the three?  You have gained a point since we were all together.  She distinguishes you.”

“But what a way to distinguish me.  It looks more like hatred than love, or liking either.”

“Not to my eye.  Why should she shun you?  You are handsome, you are good-tempered, and good company.  Why should she be shy of you?  She is afraid of you, that is why; and why is she afraid of you? because she is afraid of her own heart.  That is how I read her.  Then, as for her snubbing you, if her character was like mine, that ought to go for nothing, for I snub all the world; but this is a little queen for politeness.  I can’t think she would go so far out of her way as to affront anybody unless she had an uncommon respect for him.”

“Listen to that, now!  I am on my beam-ends.”

“Now think a minute, David,” said Eve, calmly, ignoring his late observation; “did you ever know her snub anybody?”