"I know," said Alice eagerly, "that Wat Sidney doesn't like Maria Elmore. She was perfectly wild after him, and used to behave so that it really disgusted him." "Oh, well," said Eva, "all these things are excessively disagreeable to me; it seems to me where such matters are handled and talked about and bandied about, they become like shop-worn goods, utterly disgusting. Who wants every fool and fop and every gossip who has nothing better to do talking over what ought to be the most private and delicate affairs of one's own heart!" "Well, dear, you can't help it in society. Why, every person where I have called inquired about your engagement to Wat Sidney. You see you _can't_ keep a thing of this sort private. Of course you can't. You are in the world, and the world will have you do as others do. Of course I didn't announce it, because I have no authority; but the thing is just as much _out_ as if I had. There was old Mrs. Ellis, dear old soul, said to me, 'Give my love to dear Eva, and tell her I hope she'll be happy. I suppose,' she added, 'I may send congratulations, though it isn't announced.' Oh, said I, Eva doesn't like to have matters of this sort talked about." "But aunty," said Eva, who had been coloring with vexation, "this is all gratuitous--you are all engaging and marrying me in spite of my screams as appears. I am not engaged to Mr. Sidney, and never expect to be; he is gone off on a long Southern tour, and I hope out of sight will be out of mind, and people will stop talking." "But my dear Eva, really now you ought not to treat a nice man like him in that way." "Treat him in what way?" said Eva. "Why, keep him along in this undecided manner without giving him a definite answer." "He might have had a definite answer any time in the last three months if he had asked for it. It isn't my business to speak till I'm spoken to." "You don't mean, Eva, that he has gone off without saying anything definite--bringing matters to a point." "I do mean just that, Aunty, and what's more I'm glad he's gone, and I hope before he comes back he'll see somebody that he likes better, and then it'll be all off; and, Aunty, if any one speaks to you about it you'll oblige me by saying decidedly there is nothing in it." "Well, I shan't say there never has been anything in it. I shall say you refused him." "And why so? I am not anxious to have the credit of it, and besides I think it is indelicate when a man has paid a lady the highest possible compliment he can pay, to make a public parade of it. Its sufficient to say there is nothing in it and never will be; its nobody's business how it happened." "Oh, come Eva, don't say there never will be anything in it. That is a subject on which girls are licensed to change their minds."