"You must really forgive her for a nasty torment," said Mrs. Midmore on this, and not a little as if she had seen that he _was_ out of countenance. "I should think very ill of you if you had broken no heart--_I_ had clean broken a dozen before I patched up my husband's. After that, however, I assure you I kept my hands quite off; and if Molly will expect you to do as much now yourself, it's no more than you'll expect of her and that I give you my word for it I'll back you in. I should be ashamed of her as well, I don't mind saying, if nobody had been the worse for her--though of course one knows how much less a gentleman need be the worse than a female. It isn't to me at any rate that I ask you to confess," she nobly and brightly added.
"Well, I confess to _one!_" Ralph on this felt himself moved to break out. He had visitations, had been having them uninterruptedly and with a vengeance--looking for them, invoking them, enjoying them as they came; but there was one that took him by surprise and that in the oddest way sinned by excess. He hadn't three minutes before expected it, and as soon as he had spoken it seemed irrelevant. There it was none the less for himself, and at least, with his bravest ring, he could stick to it. "One, yes, one. I won't disown her. That is," he qualified, "I was myself greatly smitten, and seem to have let her know it. But I must have let her know it," he laughed, "in vain!"
"You 'seem to have'?" Miss Midmore echoed--"but you're not quite sure, any more than of how she treated you? It must have been one of your pale passions, as you call 'em, truly--so that even if her ghost does hover I shan't be afraid of so very thin a shade."
Our young man cast about as in some wonder of his own, meeting now but for a moment the eyes of none of them. "Yes, it's a thin shade--and melts away hiding its face, even while I look back at it."
"She may well hide her face," Mrs. Midmore improvingly cried, "if she was ever such a fool as not to have felt your worth. Still," Ralph's hostess went on with her fine air at its finest, "it's a comfort to know the worst of you--which seems to be no more than that you recover easily from disappointments."