a spitted
him, as a boy does a cockchafer on a cork, that she might enjoy the
energetic agony of his gyrations. And she knew very well what she
was doing.

Mr. Slope having added to his person all such adornments as are
possible to a clergyman making a morning visit--such as a clean
necktie, clean handkerchief, new gloves, and a _soupcon_ of not
unnecessary scent--called about three o'clock at the doctor's door.
At about this hour the signora was almost always alone in the back
drawing-room. The mother had not come down. The doctor was out or
in his own room. Bertie was out, and Charlotte at any rate left the
room if anyone called whose object was specially with her sister.
Such was her idea of being charitable and sisterly.

Mr. Slope, as was his custom, asked for Mr. Stanhope, and was told, as
was the servant's custom, that the signora was in the drawing-room.
Upstairs he accordingly went. He found her, as he always did, lying on
her sofa with a French volume before her and a beautiful little inlaid
writing-case open on her table. At the moment of his entrance she was
in the act of writing.

"Ah, my friend," said she, putting out her left hand to him across
her desk, "I did not expect you to-day and was this very instant
writing to you--"

Mr. Slope, taking the soft, fair, delicate hand in his--and very soft
and fair and delicate it was--bowed over it his huge red head and
kissed it. It was a sight to see, a deed to record if the author
could fitly do it, a picture to put on canvas. Mr. Slope was big,
awkward, cumbrous, and, having his heart in his pursuit, was ill at
ease. The lady was fair, as we have said, and delicate; everything
about her was fine and refined; her hand in his looked like a rose
lying among carrots, and when he kissed it, he looked as a cow might
do on finding such a flower among her food. She was graceful as a
couchant goddess and, moreover, as self-possessed as Venus must have
been when courting Adonis.

Oh, that such grace and such beauty should have condescended to waste
itself on such a pursuit!

"I was in the act of writing to you," said she, "but now my scrawl
may go into the basket;" and she raised the sheet of gilded note-paper
from off her desk as though to tear it.

"Indeed it shall not," said he, laying the embargo of half a stone
weight of human flesh and blood upon the devoted paper. "Nothing
that you write for my eyes, signora, shall be so desecrated," and he
took up the