The two listeners laughed and exchanged a glance of comprehension.
"Offer them your hand and heart, and see if they won't accept something from a Yankee," said Mrs. Larue.
Colburne looked a trifle disconcerted, and because he did so Miss Ravenel blushed. In both these young persons there was a susceptibility, a promptness to take alarm with regard to hymenial subjects which indicated at least that they considered themselves old enough to marry each other or somebody, whether the event would ever happen or not.
"I suppose Miss Ravenel thinks I was served perfectly right," observed Colburne. "If I see her standing in a street car and offer her my seat, I suppose she will say something crushing."
He preferred, you see, to talk apropos of Miss Ravenel, rather than of Mrs. Larue or the Langdons.
"Please don't fail to try me," observed Lillie. "I hate to stand up unless it is to dance."
As Colburne had not been permitted to learn dancing in his younger days, and had felt ashamed to undertake it in what seemed to him his present fullness of years, he had nothing to say on the new idea suggested. The speech even made him feel a little uneasy: it sounded like an implication that Miss Ravenel preferred men who danced to men who did not: so fastidiously jealous and sensitive are people who are ever so slightly in love.
In this wandering and superficial way the conversation rippled along for nearly an hour. Colburne had been nonplussed from the beginning by not finding his young lady alone, and not being able therefore to say to her at least a few of the affecting things which were in the bottom of his heart. He had arrived at the house full of pleasant emotion, believing that he should certainly overflow with warm expressions of friendship if he did not absolutely pour forth a torrent of passionate affection. Mrs. Larue had dropped among his agreeable bubbles of expectation like a piece of ice into a goblet of champagne, taking the life and effervescence out of the generous fluid. He was occupied, not so much in talking or listening, as in cogitating how he could bring the conversation into congeniality with his own feelings. By the way, if he had found Miss Ravenel alone, I doubt whether he would have dared say any thing to her of a startling nature. He over-estimated her and was afraid of her; he under-estimated himself and was too modest.