The color was slowly coming back to his face, which, as she glanced covertly at him, seemed to have grown so much older that his returning blood might have brought two or three years with it.
"Really, Mr.Kearney," she said dryly, "one would think that some silly, conceited girl"-- she was quite earnest in her epithets, for a sudden, angry conviction of some coquetry and disingenuousness in Jessie had come to her in contemplating its effects upon the young fellow at her side--"some country jilt, had been trying her rustic hand upon you." "She is not silly, conceited, nor countrified," said George, slowly raising his beautiful eyes to the young girl half reproachfully.

"It is I who am all that.

No, she is right, and you know it." Much as Christie admired and valued her sister's charms, she thought this was really going too far.

What had Jessie ever done--what was Jessie--to provoke and remain insensible to such a blind devotion as this?
And really, looking at him now, he was not so VERY YOUNG for Jessie; whether his unfortunate passion had brought out all his latent manliness, or whether he had hitherto kept his serious nature in the background, certainly he was not a boy.

And certainly his was not a passion that he could be laughed out of.