y, which
was sometimes a shade too blunt, and was apt to betray her into asking
direct questions which it might have been kinder and more delicate to
leave unasked.

Eva blushed and simpered.

"I'll tell thee, Beatrice," said little Marie, dancing up. "She's over
head and ears in love--so much over head,"--and Marie's hand went as
high as it would go above her own: "but it's my belief she has tumbled
in on the wrong side."

"`The wrong side'!" answered Beatrice, laughing. "The wrong side of
love? or the wrong side of Eva?"

"The wrong side of Eva," responded Marie, with a positive little nod.
"As to love, I'm not quite sure that she knows much about it: for I
don't believe she cares half so much for Sir William as she cares for
being married. That's the grand thing with her, so far as I can make
out. And that's not my notion of love."

"Thou silly little child of twelve, what dost thou know about it?"
contemptuously demanded Eva. "Thy time is not come."

"No, and I hope it won't," said Marie, "if I'm to make such a goose of
myself over it as thou dost."

"Marie, Marie!"

"It's true, Margaret!--Now, Beatrice, dost thou not think so? She makes
a regular misery of it. There is no living with her for a day or two
before he comes to see her. She never gives him a minute's peace when
he is here; and if he looks at somebody else, she goes as black as a
thunder-cloud. If he's half an hour late, she's quite sure he is
visiting some other gentlewoman, whom he loves better than he loves her.
She's for ever making little bits of misery out of nothing. If he were
to call her `honey-sweet Eva' to-day, and only `sweet Eva' to-morrow,
she would be positive there was some shocking reason for it, instead of,
like a sensible girl, never thinking about it in that way at all."

Beatrice and Doucebelle were both laughing, and even Margaret joined in
a little.

"Of course," said Marie by way of postscript, "if Sir William had been
badly hurt in a tournament, or anything of that sort, I could understand
her worrying about it: or if he had told her that he did not love her, I
could understand that: but she worries for nothing at all! If he does
not tell her that he loves her every time he comes, she fancies he
doesn't."

"Marie, don't be so silly!"

"Thanks, I'll try not," said Marie keenly. "And she calls that love!
What dost thou think, Beatrice?"

"Why, I think it does not sound much like it, Marie--in thy
desc