no pains indeed to hide your scorn of me," says Dynecourt
bitterly.

"I regret it, if I have at any time treated you with incivility,"
returns Florence, with averted eyes and with increasing coldness. "Yet
I must always think that, for whatever has happened, you have only
yourself to blame."

"Is it a crime to love you?" he demands boldly.

"Sir," she exclaims indignantly, and raising her beautiful eyes to his
for a moment, "I must request you will never speak to me of love. There
is neither sympathy nor common friendliness between us. You are well
aware with what sentiments I regard you."

"But, why am I alone to be treated with contempt?" he asks, with sudden
passion. "All other men of your acquaintance are graciously received by
you, are met with smiles and kindly words. Upon me alone your eyes rest,
when they deign to glance in my direction, with marked disfavor. All the
world can see it. I am signaled out from the others as one to be
slighted and spurned."

"Your forget yourself," says Florence contemptuously. "I have met you
here to-day to rehearse our parts for next Tuesday evening, not to
listen to any insolent words you may wish to address to me. Let us
begin"--opening her book. "If you know your part, go on."

"I know my part only too well; it is to worship you madly, hopelessly.
Your very cruelty only serves to heighten my passion. Florence, hear
me!"

"I will not," she says, her eyes flashing. She waves him back from her
as he endeavors to take her hand. "Is it not enough that I have been
persecuted by your attentions--attentions most hateful to me--for the
past year, but you must now obtrude them upon me here? You compel me
to tell you in plain words what my manner must have shown you only too
clearly--that you are distasteful to me in every way, that your very
presence troubles me, that your touch is abhorrent to me!"

"Ah," he says, stepping back as she hurls these words at him, and
regarding her with a face distorted by passion, "if I were the master
here, instead of the poor cousin--if I were Sir Adrian--your treatment
of me would be very different!"

At the mention of Sir Adrian's name the color dies out of her face and
she grows deadly pale. Her lips quiver, but her eyes do not droop.

"I do not understand you," she says proudly.

"Then you shall," responds Dynecourt. "Do you think I am blind, that I
can not see how you have given your proud heart to my cousin, that he
has conquered wher