“Well, you need not break your heart for that:  he is going to cry—­ha! ha!”

“I’m no such thing,” cried David, indignantly, and blew his nose—­promptly, with a vague air of explanation and defiance.

But why the male of my species blows its nose to hide its sensibility a deeper than I must decide.

Mr. Talboys for some time had not been at his ease.  He had been playing too, and an instrument he hated—­second fiddle.  He rose and joined Mr. Fountain, who was sitting half awake on a distant sofa.

“Aha!” thought Eve, exulting, “we have driven him away.”

Judge her mortification when Lucy, after shutting the piano, joined her uncle and Mr. Talboys.  Eve whispered David:  “Gone to smooth him down:  the high and mighty gentleman wasn’t made enough of.”

“Every one in their turn,” said David, calmly; “that is manners.  Look! it is the old gentleman she is being kind to.  She could not be unkind to anyone, however.”

Eve put her lips to David’s ear:  “She will be unkind to you if you are ever mad enough to let her see what I see,” said she, in a cutting whisper.

“What do you see?  More than there is to see, I’ll wager,” said David, looking down.

“Ah! that is the way with young men, the moment they take a fancy; their sister is nothing to them, their best friend loses their confidence.”

“Don’t ye say that, Eve—­now don’t say that!”

“No, no, David, never mind me.  I am cross.  And if you saw a sore heart in store for anyone you had a regard for, wouldn’t you be cross?  Young men are so stupid, they can’t read a girl no more than Hebrew.  If she is civil and affable to them, oh, they are the man directly, when, instead of that, if it was so, she would more likely be shy and half afraid to come near them.  David, you are in a fool’s paradise.  In company, and even in flirtation, all sorts meet and part again; but it isn’t so with marriage.  There ’it is beasts of a kind that in one are joined, and birds of a feather that came together.’  Like to like, David.  She is a fine lady and she will marry a fine gentleman, and nothing else, with a large income.  If she knew what has been in your head this month past, she would open her eyes and ask if the man was mad.”

“She has a right to look down on me, I know,” murmured David, humbly; “but” (his eye glowing with sudden rapture) “she doesn’t—­she doesn’t.”

“Look down on you!  You are better company than she is, or anyone she can get in this-out-of-the-way place; it is her interest to be civil to you.  I am too hard upon her.  She is a lady—­a perfect lady—­and that is why she is above giving herself airs.  No, David, she is not the one to treat us with disrespect, if we don’t forget ourselves.  But if ever you let her see that you are in love with her, you will get an affront that will make your cheek burn and my heart smart—­so I tell you.”

“Hush!  I never told you I was in love with her.”