"Yes," assented Dorothy, thoughtlessly enough.
She would not have answered the question in that way could she have seen the eager anxiety on the face of the girl who asked it.
"Does he make love to you very much?" whispered Iris, laying her soft cheek close against the blind girl's. "Forgive the question, but, do you know, I have always had a longing to know just what engaged people said to each other and how they acted--whether they grew more affectionate, or, after the grand climax of an engagement had been entered into, if--if somehow they did not act a little constrained toward each other."
Dorothy laughed long and merrily at the quaint ideas of her new friend. But, then, no doubt all girls wished to know that. She had done so herself once.
"You do not answer me," murmured Miss Vincent. "Now, please don't be unkind, Dorothy, when I'm just dying to know."
"Well," said Dorothy, waxing very confidential, after the fashion of girls, "I'll tell you _my_ experience; but mind, I don't say that it is like every other girl's. Harry has been just a trifle bashful ever since the afternoon that he asked me to--to be his wife, and just a little constrained; but I always account for it in this way: that he does not want me to think him silly and spoony. He has grown, oh! ever so dignified. Why, he hardly ever says anything more about love--he thinks he has said all there is to say. And his caresses are the same way--just a little bit constrained, you know."
Iris Vincent had learned all she cared to know.
"Thank you, dear, ever so much, for gratifying my curiosity," she said aloud; but in her own heart she said:
"I knew it--I knew it! Handsome Harry Kendal does not love this girl with whom they have forced him into a betrothal. No wonder he looks sad and melancholy, with a prospect before him of marrying a blind wife! Ah, me! it is too dreadful a fate to even contemplate."
She looked complacently in the mirror at her own face. Well might Harry Kendal have remarked that it was as beautiful as a poet's dream.
Nothing could have been more exquisitely lovely than the deep, velvety, violet eyes, almost purple in their glorious depths, and the bronze-gold hair, such as Titian loved to paint, that fell in heavy curls to her slender waist.