"You are a long time deciding," she said, playfully--the color coming
fitfully under my scrutiny.
"I will hazard twenty, but you may be older."
"You think not any younger than that?" The curving lashes drooped and an
entirely new expression swept over the charming face.
"Now you look almost a child," I exclaimed with surprise. "You are a
mystery to me, and I won't try to guess any more, for it is pure guess
work."
She laughed merrily. "You are greatly mistaken. I was twenty-six
yesterday." I may have looked incredulous, and she was very keen to read
my thoughts.
"You do not believe me. Did you ever hear of a woman over twenty making
herself out older than she was?"
"My experience is but limited." I still believed that for some reason of
her own she was deceiving me respecting her age.
"When you hear my story your surprise will be that I do not look six and
thirty, instead of a decade younger."
Her next question was more startling than the first. "How do you like Mr.
Winthrop?"
I replied guardedly that I liked him very well.
"Excuse me, but that is not a correct reply. No one that cares for him at
all does so in that moderate fashion. They either love or hate him."
"Have you ever known him intimately enough to be able to say how he is
liked, or deserves to be?"
She answered me by a low ripple of laughter. My perplexity was
increasing, but I quite decided this Hermione Le Grange, as she called
herself, had not a very sad heart to get comforted.
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