"You never can tell. He went out west then, and there he has stayed ever
since. I suppose his life would have been very different if nothing of
the kind had happened. He had a great deal of talent. I always thought I
should hear of him in some way."
"Well, it was a heartless, shameless thing! I don't see how you can
speak of it so leniently as you do, Mrs. Bowen. It makes all sorts of
coquetry and flirtation more detestable to me than ever. Why, it has
ruined his life!"
"Oh, he was young enough then to outlive it. After all, they were a boy
and girl."
"A boy and girl! How old were they?"
"He must have been twenty-three or four, and she was twenty."
"My age! Do you call that being a girl?"
"She was old enough to know what she was about," said Mrs. Bowen justly.
Imogene fell back in her chair, drawing out her needle the full length
of its thread, and then letting her hand fall. "I don't know. It seems
as if I never should be grown up, or anything but a child. Yes, when I
think of the way young men talk, they do seem boys. Why can't they talk
like Mr. Colville? I wish I could talk like him. It makes you forget how
old and plain he is."
She remained with her eyelids dropped in an absent survey of her sewing,
while Mrs. Bowen regarded her with a look of vexation, impatience,
resentment, on the last refinement of these emotions, which she banished
from her face before Miss Graham looked up and said, with a smile "How
funny it is to see Effie's infatuation with him! She can't take her eyes
off him for a moment, and she follows him round the room so as not to
lose a word he is saying. It was heroic of her to go to bed without a
murmur before he left to-night."
"Yes, she sees that he is good," said Mrs. Bowen.
"Oh, she sees that he's something very much more. Mr. Waters is good."
Miss Graham had the best of the argument, and so Mrs. Bowen did not
reply.
"I feel," continued the young girl, "as if it were almost a shame to
have asked him to go to that silly dancing party with us. It seems as if
we didn't appreciate him. I think we ought to have kept him for high
aesthetic occasions and historical researches."
"Oh, I don't think Mr. Colville was very deeply offended at being asked
to go with us."
"No," said Imogene, with another sigh, "he didn't seem so. I suppose
there's always an undercurrent of sadness--of tragedy--in everything for
him."
"I don't suppose anything of the kind," cried Mrs. Bowen gaily. "He's
had time enough to get over it."
"Do people _ever_ get over such things?"
"Yes--men."
"It must be because he was young, as you say. But if it had happened
_now_?"
"Oh, it _couldn't_ happen now. He's altogether too cool and
calculating."
"Do you think he's cool and calculating?"
"No. He's too old for a broken heart--a new one."
"Mrs. Bowen," demanded the girl solemnly, "could _you_ forgive yourself
for such a thing if you had done it?"
"Yes, perfectly well, if I wasn't in love with him."
"But if you'd made him _think_ you were?" pursued the girl breathlessly.
"If I were a flirt--yes."
"_I_ couldn't," said Imogene, with tragic depth.
"Oh, be done with your intensities, and go to bed, Imogene," said Mrs.
Bowen, giving her a playful push.