letter, put that also among the carrots and fed on it,
and then proceeded to read it.

"Gracious me! Mr. Slope," said she, "I hope you don't mean to say
you keep all the trash I write to you. Half my time I don't know
what I write, and when I do, I know it is only fit for the back of
the fire. I hope you have not that ugly trick of keeping letters."

"At any rate, I don't throw them into a waste-paper basket. If
destruction is their doomed lot, they perish worthily, and are burnt
on a pyre, as Dido was of old."

"With a steel pen stuck through them, of course," said she, "to make
the simile more complete. Of all the ladies of my acquaintance I
think Lady Dido was the most absurd. Why did she not do as Cleopatra
did? Why did she not take out her ships and insist on going with
him? She could not bear to lose the land she had got by a swindle,
and then she could not bear the loss of her lover. So she fell
between two stools. Mr. Slope, whatever you do, never mingle love
and business."

Mr. Slope blushed up to his eyes and over his mottled forehead to
the very roots of his hair. He felt sure that the signora knew all
about his intentions with reference to Mrs Bold. His conscience told
him that he was detected. His doom was to be spoken; he was to be
punished for his duplicity, and rejected by the beautiful creature
before him. Poor man. He little dreamt that had all his intentions
with reference to Mrs. Bold been known to the signora, it would only
have added zest to that lady's amusement. It was all very well to
have Mr. Slope at her feet, to show her power by making an utter fool
of a clergyman, to gratify her own infidelity by thus proving the
little strength which religion had in controlling the passions even
of a religious man; but it would be an increased gratification if she
could be made to understand that she was at the same time alluring
her victim away from another, whose love if secured would be in every
way beneficent and salutary.

The Signora had indeed discovered, with the keen instinct of such a
woman, that Mr. Slope was bent on matrimony with Mrs. Bold, but in
alluding to Dido she had not thought of it. She instantly perceived,
however, from her lover's blushes, what was on his mind and was not
slow in taking advantage of it.

She looked him full in the face, not angrily, nor yet with a smile,
but with an intense and overpowering gaze; then, holding up her
forefinger and slightly shaking her head,