“Do you know,” said Carlton, “I’m rather afraid of you to-night!” He paused, and watched her for a little time as she sat upright, with her hands folded on her lap.

“You are so very resplendent and queenly and altogether different,” he added.  The girl moved her bare shoulders slightly and leaned back against the bench.

“The Princess did not come,” she said.

“No,” Carlton answered, with a sudden twinge of conscience at having forgotten that fact.  “That’s one of the reasons I took you away from those men,” he explained.  “I wanted you to sympathize with me.”

Miss Morris did not answer him at once.  She did not seem to be in a sympathetic mood.  Her manner suggested rather that she was tired and troubled.

“I need sympathy myself to-night,” she said.  “We received a letter after dinner that brought bad news for us.  We must go home at once.”

“Bad news!” exclaimed Carlton, with much concern.  “From home?”

“Yes, from home,” she replied; “but there is nothing wrong there; it is only bad news for us.  My sister has decided to be married in June instead of July, and that cuts us out of a month on the Continent.  That’s all.  We shall have to leave immediately—­tomorrow.  It seems that Mr. Abbey is able to go away sooner than he had hoped, and they are to be married on the first.”

“Mr. Abbey!” exclaimed Carlton, catching at the name.  “But your sister isn’t going to marry him, is she?”

Miss Morris turned her head in some surprise.  “Yes—­why not?” she said.

“But I say!” cried Carlton, “I thought your aunt told me that you were going to marry Abbey; she told me so that day on the steamer when he came to see you off.”

“I marry him—­my aunt told you—­impossible!” said Miss Morris, smiling.  “She probably said that `her niece’ was going to marry him; she meant my sister.  They had been engaged some time.”

“Then who are you going to marry?” stammered Carlton.

“I am not going to marry any one,” said Miss Morris.

Carlton stared at her blankly in amazement.  “Well, that’s most absurd!” he exclaimed.

He recognized instantly that the expression was hardly adequate, but he could not readjust his mind so suddenly to the new idea, and he remained looking at her with many confused memories rushing through his brain.  A dozen questions were on his tongue.  He remembered afterwards how he had noticed a servant trimming the candle in one of the orange-colored lanterns, and that he had watched him as he disappeared among the palms.

The silence lasted for so long a time that it had taken on a significance in itself which Carlton recognized.  He pulled himself up with a short laugh.  “Well,” he remonstrated, mirthlessly, “I don’t think you’ve treated me very well.”

“How, not treated you very well?” Miss Morris asked, settling herself more easily.  She had been sitting during the pause which followed Carlton’s discovery with a certain rigidity, as if she was on a strain of attention.  But her tone was now as friendly as always, and held its customary suggestion of amusement.  Carlton took his tone from it, although his mind was still busily occupied with incidents and words of hers that she had spoken in their past intercourse.