Pretty and bewitching as "Dresden China" is, the Colonel seems to feel no inclination to pay her compliments. He stands and listens to her chatter with the sort of amused indulgence he would bestow on any pretty girl. He thinks what a pity the American twang is so strong, and how vulgar is the aunt, and marvels what the _fiancé_ is like, and why he is not now beside his lady-love. And all the time he cannot keep his restless glance from following the floating movements of that graceful figure in her creamy draperies of Indian silk. His heart echoes the poet's words unconsciously: There is none like her--none! "What would I not give to know if she remembers still?" he says to himself. "But I am a fool to imagine it possible. Why should she? and how could she forgive the old sin now any more than in her young, passionate, romantic girlhood? And yet--oh, my darling, if life has taught you wisdom, you must surely know that love has nothing to do with the soulless follies in which men find beguilement, nor is there one thing on earth they loathe so utterly as an unworthy passion, whose pursuit has been base, whose conquest wearied almost as soon as achieved, whose every memory is a sting that shames them, and from which their better nature recoils even in thought, once the evil glamour is over." But he did not know--how should he?--that it is just of that evil glamour a woman's heart is jealous. When Lady Etwynde had loved him, she had been almost a child--young, fresh, innocent, pure. She had abandoned herself to that love without thought or analysis. She had worshipped him as the noblest, truest of God's creatures; she had thought that to him she was all in all. No cloud had crossed the sky, no sound disturbed the illusion; in its innocence and depth and peace, her love had been in its way as perfect as it was beautiful; and then suddenly, without warning or preparation of any sort, she had learnt that she was deceived. Had she known more of the world, had she been in any way less innocent of mind and thought, she would have known better than to expect so much as she had expected. She would have learnt the lesson all women have to learn, that their love must accept the evil of a man's past as well as the good of his future, giving a simple fidelity that asks no questions, and takes just what--remains. But she had not known. Her dreams had been rudely broken; her faith as rudely shaken. Angered, outraged, shamed, she had been stung to the fierceness of jealous anger, and her love had looked debased in her sight as in his own, because of the falsehoods told and credited.