During all the evening, Lieutenant Marshall paid me marked attention, so much so that, by the time we were ready to go home, I had become the target for all the jokes and witticisms that are kept laid up for such occasions. In a little place like Louden, where everybody knew everybody, and there was but little going on to talk about, any circumstance that would afford scope for harmless gossip and teasing was "nuts" to the good people, and before noon the next day it was generally understood, throughout Louden and its vicinity, that "Lieutenant Marshall was desperately smitten with Miss Forsyth."
My own vanity being thus supported by the openly expressed opinions of the discerning public, it is hardly to be wondered at if for a while I shared their delusion and their belief. But, being even then a little given to metaphysics and analytic investigations of all mental phenomena that fell under my notice, instead of putting the pretty rosebud that Mr. Marshall offered me next my heart, I set myself to pulling it to pieces, and presently discovered that it was not a real rose at all, only a patchwork, scentless imitation.
In other words, I had ideas of my own on the subject of love. As the six-year-old New Yorker said, when he was asked if he had no one little girl whom he loved better than any one else in the world, "show me the boy of my age in New York that hasn't!" so I can say, show me the girl of seventeen who does not think herself an adept in all the signs and tokens of true love. And I soon settled it in my own mind, that, when brought to the test of severe and impartial criticism, Mr. Marshall did not exhibit one evidence of real love, beyond an apparent preference for my society. That the preference was apparent and not real his abstraction and indifference convinced me. At first, considering it a duty I owed to society to talk to those with whom I was thrown, unless they would kindly relieve me of this obligation, I tasked myself to weariness to find some topic of mutual interest between my constant attendant and myself. My remarks were all politely listened and replied to, and then he fell back into his state of reverie and silence. If there had not been a shade of melancholy about him, I should hardly have felt so patiently towards him for engrossing so much of my time, while his thoughts were evidently far away. But I had settled it in my own mind that he had been in love, and that the lady of his love had died--this accounted for his sadness and abstraction; and that some resemblance between the lost lady and myself attracted him to me.