Page:The Tsar's Window.djvu/222

 "Do you mean to say," I gasped, "that I have really acted in the way you describe?"

"It is certainly true, Dorris. That is what puzzles me. I could not make up my mind whether you cared for him or not."

"I had no idea that I behaved like that," I murmured. "How very foolish I must have seemed!"

"No one else noticed it," said Alice consolingly; "except George," she added, after a slight pause.

"Did he notice it?" I cried, turning round upon her. "Did he speak to you of it?"

"No, no!" she exclaimed hastily. "How you jump at conclusions! He has never exchanged a word with me on the subject; but I judged, by his manner and expression, that he noticed all these little things. It was in studying their effect upon him that I learned his secret."

"Dear, dear!" I sighed. "What an Argus eye has been upon us all this time, while we were blissfully unconscious,—thinking that our secrets were locked in our own breasts!"

We both laughed, and I went on in a brisk tone: "Really, Alice, you are all wrong. George is probably in love with any one rather than myself; and I am not in the least inclined to marry him, even if he should ask me,—which, I can assure you, he has never done, nor do I believe he has any intention of it. If your suspicions had been in another direction," I added carelessly, "they would have been more correct."

Alice took me up eagerly: "Chilton Thurber, you