However, it will be easily conceived that, under these circumstances, the conversation between Miss Falkland and Colonel Manners was as nice, and delicate, and difficult an encounter of their wits as ever was practised. Colonel Manners was soon satisfied; for, in answer to some complimentary observation upon her cousin's manners and appearance, which went to praise their tranquillity as well as their elegance, Isadore answered frankly, and smiling as she did so, "Oh, Marian is often more _commoto dentro_ than you think." Miss Falkland's researches, however, were less easily pursued, and they led her, like a child hunting a butterfly, through a world of flowers. One time, she would put her problem generally, and wonder whether any man ever did feel, and continue to feel, as she wished to believe Edward had done towards Marian; and then she would put it particularly, and say, that she thought such an attachment as his must have been a wonderful solace and delight to him; an inexhaustible fund of sweet feelings and hope, throughout all that he had been obliged to endure. But still Colonel Manners, who very clearly understood what she meant, hung back a little in his explanations; pleased, in truth, to watch the feelings that prompted her and the path she pursued; pleased with all the graces that the subject called up in her countenance and her manner; the beaming smile, the sparkling eye, and sometimes the sudden stop and passing blush, when she became uncertain of the next step and dared not advance. After he had amused himself a little, and saw that she might misconstrue his backwardness into something disadvantageous to his friend, he caught at the next sentence, and replied, "Yes, indeed, I look upon De Vaux's attachment, and his engagement to your fair cousin, before he went to America, as one of the greatest blessings that could have happened to him; especially for a man whose heart was calculated to make it his happiness and his safeguard, and his leading star wherever he went." Isadore blushed warmly; and perhaps there was a little mingling of emotions in her blush; for, in the first place, the full confirmation of what she had wished and hoped, made her cheek glow; and, in the next place, Colonel Manners' words were so exactly a reply to the questions which had been lurking unspoken in her heart, that she almost suspected he had seen deeper into her thoughts than she had anticipated. A slight smile that followed upon his lip she considered as excessively malicious; but she was one who never suffered wrath to rankle in her bosom, but, in her way, revenged herself always on the spot. "You speak so feelingly, Colonel Manners," said she, just suffering a single ray of laughing light to gleam out of her fine dark eyes; "you speak so feelingly, that I doubt not you have been guarded and led in the same manner."