✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ “Oh, yes, I knew his father, when I was a girl, and I don’t wonder at the son’s being stupid, as you say. He could talk of nothing but horses, I remember. By the way, speaking of horses, what has become of that poor Mr. Smith who was so badly hurt last October?” “He is still at Elmington, I believe; that is—yes, of course he is there. I mean we left him there.” “You _believe_!” laughed Mrs. Rolfe. “Upon my word,” added she, “that is a summary way of disposing of a young man. He must be a nonentity indeed. I often wondered that you never mentioned him in your letters. Alice, on the contrary, could write of no one else. It was the Don did this and the Don said that.” “Her beloved Charley and Mr. Smith are close friends.” “Oh, I see; but I don’t understand how it was that Alice seemed to take such a lively interest in ‘the Don,’ as she calls him, while you can scarcely remember that he is still at Elmington. She never wrote a letter without singing his praises.” “As I said just now, ‘the Don’ has the good taste to admire Mr. Frobisher.” “Ah, that accounts for Alice’s liking ‘the Don.’ Am I to suppose” (something in Mary’s manner made her mother feel sure that she was on the right track)—“am I to suppose, then, that you are interested in some one whom the Don has _not_ the good taste to admire?” “You are a marvellous guesser, to be sure,” cried Mary, with a bright laugh, and springing from the lounge and into her mother’s lap. “Ah, I have hit the nail on the head, have I?” asked Mrs. Rolfe, with a pleased look of conscious sagacity. “What a subtle brain is here!” continued Mary, smoothing back the white hairs from her mother’s forehead, and gazing tenderly into her loving eyes. “And so you have been hiding something from your poor old mother? But you are going to tell her now, aren’t you?” added she, coaxingly. “Who is this person in whom you are interested?” “Mary Rolfe!” “Yourself? Ah, I see. Mr. Smith does not like you, and therefore you do not fancy Mr. Smith. Am I right?” “Not entirely.” “Oho! Then he is another of those upon whom you have found it impossible to smile. Well, I cannot blame him, poor fellow.” And she kissed her daughter’s forehead. “The idea of your having never—but why did Alice never allude to this affair? She gave me an account of all the others.” “I can’t say,” replied Mary, leaving her mother’s lap for the lounge. “So you did not fancy him. Of course not, of course not. He is a handsome fellow,—very; but really, I cannot see how he could have had the hardihood to make love to you while maintaining his incognito, as Alice writes that he still does.” “Hardihood in making love is just what some girls would like.”