nger and not
grief, and while, had it been the latter, he would have been thoroughly
uncomfortable from sympathy, he only chuckled as he figured to himself
her indignation. At that very moment, she was undoubtedly clenching her
pretty little fists, and breathing fast with impotent wrath, in the room
below. Ah, well, let her heart lie in a pickle of good strong disgust
overnight, and it would strike in a good deal more effectually than if
she were allowed to clear her mind by an indignant explanation on the
spot.

The following day he bore himself toward her with the slightly distant
air of one who considers himself aggrieved, and attempted no approaches.
In the evening, which was her first opportunity, she came to him and
said in a tone in which, by this time, weariness and disgust had taken
the place of indignation:--

"You were absurdly mistaken in thinking that Miss Roberts was trying to
flirt."

"Bless your dear, jealous heart!" interrupted Hunt laughingly, with an
air of patronizing affection. "I'd no idea you minded it so much. There,
there! Let's not allude to this matter again. No, no! not another word!"
he gayly insisted, putting his hand over her mouth as she was about to
make another effort to be heard.

He was determined not to hear anything, and she had to leave it so.
It was with surprise that she observed how indifferently she finally
acquiesced in being so cruelly misunderstood by him. In the deadened
state of her feelings, she was not then able to appreciate the entire
change in the nature of her sentiments which that indifference showed.
Love, though rooted in the past, depends upon the surrounding atmosphere
for the breath of continued life, and he had surrounded her with the
stifling vapors of disgust until her love had succumbed and withered.
She found that his exhibitions of conceit and insipidity did not affect
her in the same way as before. Her sensations were no longer sharp and
poignant, but chiefly a dull shame and sense of disgrace that she had
loved him. She met his attentions with a coldly passive manner, which
gave him the liveliest satisfaction. The cure was succeeding past all
expectation; but he had about time for one more stroke, which would make
a sure thing of it. He prepared the way by dropping hints that he had
been writing some verses of late; and finally, with the evident idea
that she would be flattered, gave out that his favorite theme was
her own charms, and that she migh