Other things did intervene. Among them was an adventure in Central Park. One afternoon a brougham in which she was driving crossed a victoria where sat a remarkably pretty woman with Loftus at her side.
Marie’s eyes filled. Had he struck her he would have hurt her far less. When next she saw him she told him so. The idea amused him. He was not a ruffian, only a cad. Like the whim, he waved the little tragedy away.
“That was Mrs. Annandale,” he announced unabashedly, “a very old friend of mine. I have known her all my life.”
“ Mrs. Annandale!” Marie exclaimed. “Not the wife of the Mr. Annandale whom you brought here last year?”
Loftus stared at her. He did not understand. Yet then, neither did she.
“Why,” she continued, “you told me he was to marry a dark young lady.”
“Yes,” said Loftus, fumbling as he spoke for a cigarette. “But I told you also not to use that expression. Say girl or young woman. If you want to be fantastic, say young gentlewoman, but never young lady. You are right, though. Annandale was to have married a Miss Waldron, but she threw him over and he married somebody else.”
To Marie all this was inexplicable. She did not understand how a man thrown over by one girl could so speedily marry another. She did not understand, either, what Loftus could be doing with her. To her mind driving presupposed an intimacy which acquaintance might explain but did not excuse. The matter perplexed her, and not unnaturally. It is only through our own heart that it is possible to attempt to read the heart of another. In her heart Marie knew that nothing earthly could induce her to appear as intimate with a man as Loftus had with that woman. Yet, though she knew that, she knew also that many of her views, like many of her expressions, were not in tune with the tone of the set in which Loftus moved.