He was pouring gall into Vaga Powell's heart, and apparently without being conscious of it. For, by this, he had reached full confidence that his own love was reciprocated by her with whom he was conversing. "Like enough," was the response, in tones so despairingly sad, that, but for his being a fool in his own conceit, he might have drawn deductions from it to make him suspect his folly. More, could he have but seen the expression upon her features at that moment--pain, almost agony. The pantomimic dance--just over, all its acts, incidents, and gestures were still fresh before her mind--the latest the most vivid--the dropping of the glove; its being taken up, as she supposed, with eager alacrity; then, the man she loved throwing wide open his arms to receive into them the woman she hated! All this was in her thoughts, a very tumult of trouble--in her heart as a flaming fire. The darkness favoured her, or Reginald Trevor could not have failed perceiving it on her face. But, indeed, she would have little cared if he had. Dissembling with him all the night, she meant doing so no more. Though the play was not with him, the game had gone against her; she had lost the stakes, as she supposed, irretrievably; and now would retire into the shadow and bitterness of solitude. Little dreamt he of how she was suffering, or the cause. Knowing it, he might have sprung away from her side, quickly and angrily as had Clarisse from that of Eustace. Continuing the conversation, he said, insinuatingly,-- "On second thoughts, I'm wrong, Mistress Vaga. I _have_ known a man as much in love with a woman as my cousin is with yours--know one now?" "Indeed?" The exclamatory rejoinder was purely mechanical, she who made it not having enough interest in what had been said to inquire who was the individual he alluded to. Yet this was the very question he courted. He had to angle for it further, saying,-- "May I tell you who it is?" "_Oh_, certainly; if you desire to do so." Even this icy response failed to check him. He either did not perceive its coldness, or mistook it for reticence due to the occasion. Several times, since his first abortive attempt, he had been on the eve of making fuller declaration to her--in short, a proposal of marriage. But she had been dancing with others besides himself, and no good opportunity had as yet offered. That seemed to have come now. So, taking advantage of it, and her permission, he said, in an impressive way,-- "The man is Reginald Trevor--myself." If he expected her to give a start of feigned surprise, and follow it up by the inquiry, "Who is the woman?" he was disappointed. For he but heard repeated the laconic exclamation she had already used, and in like tones of careless indifference. "Indeed!" That, and nothing more. Still unrepulsed he returned to the attack; again, as it were, begging the question,-- "Shall I name the woman?"