t. She was
not pining for the presence of Montjoie, but rather glad after a long
afternoon of him that he should prefer a cigarette to her company. She
felt that this was precisely her own case, the cigarette being
represented by the book or any other expedient that answered to cover
the process of thought.

Bice was not used to these processes. Keen observation of the ways of
mankind in all the strange exhibitions of them which she had seen in her
life had been the chief exercise of her lively intelligence. To Mr.
Derwentwater, perhaps, may be given the credit of having roused the
girl's mind, not indeed to sympathy with himself, but into a kind of
perturbation and general commotion of spirit. Events were crowding
quickly upon her. She had accepted one suitor and refused another within
the course of a few hours. Such incidents develop the being; not,
perhaps, the first in any great degree--but the second was not in the
programme, and it had perplexed and roused her. There had come into her
mind glimmerings, reflections, she could not tell what. Montjoie was
occupied in something of the same manner downstairs, thinking it all
over with his cigarette, wondering what Society and what his uncle would
say, for whom he had a certain respect. He said to himself on the whole
that he did not care that for Society! She suited him down to the
ground. She was the jolliest girl he had ever met, besides being so
awfully handsome. It was worth while going out riding with her just to
see how the fellows stared and the women grew green with envy; or coming
into a room with her, Jove! what a sensation she would make, and how
everybody would open their eyes when she appeared blazing in the
Montjoie diamonds! His satisfaction went a little deeper than this, to
do him justice. He was, in his way, very much in love with the beautiful
creature whom he had made up his mind to secure from the first moment he
saw her. But, perhaps, if it had not been for the triumph of her
appearance at Park Lane, and the hum of admiration and wonder that rose
around her, he would not have so early fixed his fate; and the shadow of
the uncle now and then came like a cloud over his glee. After the sudden
gravity with which he remembered this, there suddenly gleamed upon him a
vision of all his plain cousins gathering round his bride to scowl her
down, and blast her with criticism and disapproval, which made him burst
into a fit of laughter. Bice would hold her o