‘Angry for nothing! Do you call that studied coldness you have observed towards me all day yesterday nothing? Is your ceremonious manner--exquisitely polite, I will not deny--is that nothing? Is your chilling salute when we met--I half believe you curtsied--nothing? That you shun me, that you take pains not to keep my company, never to be with me alone is past denial.’ ‘And I do not deny it,’ said Kate, with a voice of calm and quiet meaning. ‘At last, then, I have the avowal. You own that you love me no longer.’ ‘No, I own nothing of the kind: I love you very dearly; but I see that our ideas of life are so totally unlike, that unless one should bend and conform to the other, we cannot blend our thoughts in that harmony which perfect confidence requires. You are so much above me in many things, so much more cultivated and gifted--I was going to say civilised, and I believe I might--’ ‘Ta--ta--ta,’ cried Nina impatiently. ‘These flatteries are very ill-timed.’ ‘So they would be, if they were flatteries; but if you had patience to hear me out, you’d have learned that I meant a higher flattery for myself.’ ‘Don’t I know it? don’t I guess?’ cried the Greek. ‘Have not your downcast eyes told it? and that look of sweet humility that says, “At least I am not a flirt?”’ ‘Nor am I,’ said Kate coldly. ‘And I am! Come now, do confess. You want to say it.’ ‘With all my heart I wish you were not!’ And Kate’s eyes swam as she spoke. ‘And what if I tell you that I know it--that in the very employment of the arts of what you call coquetry, I am but exercising those powers of pleasing by which men are led to frequent the salon instead of the café, and like the society of the cultivated and refined better than--’ ‘No, no, no!’ burst in Kate. ‘There is no such mock principle in the case. You are a flirt because you like the homage it secures you, and because, as you do not believe in such a thing as an honest affection, you have no scruple about trifling with a man’s heart.’ ‘So much for captivating that bold hussar,’ cried Nina. ‘For the moment I was not thinking of him.’ ‘Of whom, then?’ ‘Of that poor Captain Curtis, who has just ridden away.’ ‘Oh, indeed!’ ‘Yes. He has a pretty wife and three nice little girls, and they are the happiest people in the world. They love each other, and love their home--so, at least, I am told, for I scarcely know them myself.’ ‘And what have I done with _him_?’ ‘Sent him away sad and doubtful--very doubtful if the happiness he believed in was the real article after all, and disposed to ask himself how it was that his heart was beating in a new fashion, and that some new sense had been added to his nature, of which he had no inkling before. Sent him away with the notes of a melody floating through his brain, so that the merry laugh of his children will be a discord, and such a memory of a soft glance, that his wife’s bright look will be meaningless.’ ‘And I have done all this? Poor me!’