My little picture, framed as we rode homeward, and indignantly scoffed at by my calmer reason, had visited his brain too.

He had looked on the fair northern woman and fancied himself at her side, her lover, her husband.

All this conversation and argument had been only a set plan to give himself the pleasure of contemplating and discussing such a union, without exciting surprise or comment.

I had been suspecting it for some time, and now his sudden interest in his mouthpiece, to conceal a very real embarrassment, put the matter beyond all doubt.
He was probably in love, my acquaintance of two days.

He saw in me a plain person, who could not possibly be a rival, having some knowledge of the world, and he was in need of a confidant, like a school-girl.