“The weather,” she repeated, “is unusually warm.  Do you think that Major Anderson will hold out at Sumter?  Do you think the fleet is going to relieve him?  Dear me,” she sighed, “where will it all end, Mr. Berkley?”

“In war,” he said, also smiling; but neither of them believed it, or, at the moment, cared.  There were other matters impending—­since their first encounter.

“I have thought about you a good deal since Camilla’s theatre party,” he said pleasantly.

“Have you?” She scarcely knew what else to say—­and regretted saying anything.

“Indeed I have.  I dare not believe you have wasted as much as one thought on the man you danced with once—­and refused ever after.”

She felt, suddenly, a sense of uneasiness in being near him.

“Of course I have remembered you, Mr. Berkley,” she said with composure.  “Few men dance as well.  It has been an agreeable memory to me.”

“But you would not dance with me again.”

“I—­there were—­you seemed perfectly contented to sit out—­the rest—­with me.”

He considered the carpet attentively.  Then looking up with quick, engaging smile: 

“I want to ask you something.  May I?”

She did not answer.  As it had been from the first time she had ever seen him, so it was now with her; a confused sense of the necessity for caution in dealing with a man who had inspired in her such an unaccountable inclination to listen to what he chose to say.

“What is it you wish to ask?” she inquired pleasantly.

“It is this:  are you really surprised that I came?  Are you, in your heart?”

“Did I appear to be very much agitated?  Or my heart, either, Mr. Berkley?” she asked with a careless laugh, conscious now of her quickening pulses.  Outwardly calm, inwardly Irresolute, she faced him with a quiet smile of confidence.

“Then you were not surprised that I came?” he insisted.

“You did not wait to be asked.  That surprised me a little.”

“I did wait.  But you didn’t ask me.”

“That seems to have made no difference to you,” she retorted, laughing.

“It made this difference.  I seized upon the only excuse I had and came to pay my respects as a kinsman.  Do you know that I am a relation?”

“That is a very pretty compliment to us all, I think.”

“It is you who are kind in accepting me.”

“As a relative, I am very glad to——­”

“I came,” he said, “to see you.  And you know it.”

“But you couldn’t do that, uninvited!  I had not asked you.”

“But—­it’s done,” he said.

She sat very still, considering him.  Within her, subtle currents seemed to be contending once more, disturbing her equanimity.  She said, sweetly: 

“I am not as offended as I ought to be.  But I do not see why you should disregard convention with me.”