as may be--pique--annoy--irritate--outrage,
but take care that you interest her Let her only come to feel what a very
tiresome thing mere adulation is, and she will one day value your two or
three civil speeches as gems of priceless worth. It is exactly because I
deeply desire to gain her affections, I have begun in this way.'

'You have come too late.'

'How do you mean too late--she is not engaged?'

'She is engaged--she is to be married to Walpole.'

'To Walpole!'

'Yes; he came over a few days ago to ask her. There is some question
now--I don't well understand it--about some family consent, or an
invitation--something, I believe, that Nina insists on, to show the world
how his family welcome her amongst them; and it is for this he has gone to
London, but to be back in eight or nine days, the wedding to take place
towards the end of the month.'

'Is he very much in love?'

'I should say he is.'

'And she? Of course she could not possibly care for a fellow like Walpole?'

'I don't see why not. He is very much the stamp of man girls admire.'

'Not girls like Nina; not girls who aspire to a position in life, and who
know that the little talents of the salon no more make a man of the world
than the tricks of the circus will make a foxhunter. These ambitious
women--she is one of them--will marry a hopeless idiot if he can bring
wealth and rank and a great name; but they will not take a brainless
creature who has to work his way up in the world. If she has accepted
Walpole, there is pique in it, or ennui, or that uneasy desire of change
that girls suffer from like a malady.'

'I cannot tell you why, but I know she has accepted him.'

'Women are not insensible to the value of second thoughts.'

'You mean she might throw him over--might jilt him?'

'I'll not employ the ugly word that makes the wrong it is only meant to
indicate; but there are few of our resolves in life to which we might not
move amendment, and the changed opinion a woman forms of a man before
marriage would become a grievous injury if it happened after.'

'But must she of necessity change?'

'If she marry Walpole, I should say certainly. If a girl has fair abilities
and a strong temper--and Nina has a good share of each--she will endure
faults, actual vices, in a man, but she'll not stand littleness. Walpole
has nothing else; and so I hope to prove to her to-morrow and the day
after--in fact, during those eight or ten days you tell me he