I supposed it to be."

"You took it? Where did you take it?"

It seemed to poor Rosier he was being insulted, and he waited a moment,
asking himself how much a true lover ought to submit to. "Madame Merle
gave me, as I understood it, a message from you--to the effect that you
declined to give me the opportunity I desire, the opportunity to explain
my wishes to you." And he flattered himself he spoke rather sternly.

"I don't see what Madame Merle has to do with it. Why did you apply to
Madame Merle?"

"I asked her for an opinion--for nothing more. I did so because she had
seemed to me to know you very well."

"She doesn't know me so well as she thinks," said Osmond.

"I'm sorry for that, because she has given me some little ground for
hope."

Osmond stared into the fire a moment. "I set a great price on my
daughter."

"You can't set a higher one than I do. Don't I prove it by wishing to
marry her?"

"I wish to marry her very well," Osmond went on with a dry impertinence
which, in another mood, poor Rosier would have admired.

"Of course I pretend she'd marry well in marrying me. She couldn't
marry a man who loves her more--or whom, I may venture to add, she loves
more."

"I'm not bound to accept your theories as to whom my daughter
loves"--and Osmond looked up with a quick, cold smile.

"I'm not theorising. Your daughter has spoken."

"Not to me," Osmond continued, now bending forward a little and dropping
his eyes to his boot-toes.

"I have her promise, sir!" cried Rosier with the sharpness of
exasperation.

As their voices had been pitched very low before, such a note attracted
some attention from the company. Osmond waited till this little movement
had subsided; then he said, all undisturbed: "I think she has no
recollection of having given it."

They had been standing with their faces to the fire, and after he had
uttered these last words the master of the house turned round again
to the room. Before Rosier had time to reply he perceived that a
gentleman--a stranger--had just come in, unannounced, according to the
Roman custom, and was about to present himself to his host. The latter
smiled blandly, but somewhat blankly; the visitor had a handsome face
and a large, fair beard, and was evidently an Englishman.

"You apparently don't recognise me," he said with a smile that expressed
more than Osmond's.

"Ah yes, now I do. I expected so little to see you."

Rosier departed and went in direct