ve
anything to say that can do anybody any good." She sat down, however,
and so far yielded. "Of course I cannot make you go away, Mr.
Spooner; but I should have thought, when I asked you--"

Mr. Spooner also seated himself, and uttered a sigh. Making love to
a sweet, soft, blushing, willing, though silent girl is a pleasant
employment; but the task of declaring love to a stony-hearted,
obdurate, ill-conditioned Diana is very disagreeable for any
gentleman. And it is the more so when the gentleman really loves,--or
thinks that he loves,--his Diana. Mr. Spooner did believe himself
to be verily in love. Having sighed, he began: "Miss Palliser, this
opportunity of declaring to you the state of my heart is too valuable
to allow me to give it up without--without using it."

"It can't be of any use."

"Oh, Miss Palliser,--if you knew my feelings!"

"But I know my own."

"They may change, Miss Palliser."

"No, they can't."

"Don't say that, Miss Palliser."

"But I do say it. I say it over and over again. I don't know what any
gentleman can gain by persecuting a lady. You oughtn't to have been
shown up here at all."

Mr. Spooner knew well that women have been won even at the tenth time
of asking, and this with him was only the third. "I think if you knew
my heart--" he commenced.

"I don't want to know your heart."

"You might listen to a man, at any rate."

"I don't want to listen. It can't do any good. I only want you to
leave me alone, and go away."

"I don't know what you take me for," said Mr. Spooner, beginning to
wax angry.

"I haven't taken you for anything at all. This is very disagreeable
and very foolish. A lady has a right to know her own mind, and she
has a right not to be persecuted." She would have referred to Lord
Chiltern's letter had not all the hopes of her heart been so terribly
crushed since that letter had been written. In it he had openly
declared that she was already engaged to be married to Mr. Maule,
thinking that he would thus put an end to Mr. Spooner's little
adventure. But since the writing of Lord Chiltern's letter that
unfortunate reference had been made to Boulogne, and every particle
of her happiness had been destroyed. She was a miserable, blighted
young woman, who had quarrelled irretrievably with her lover, feeling
greatly angry with herself because she had made the quarrel, and yet
conscious that her own self-respect had demanded the quarrel. She was
full of regret, dec