decline to let me drive you a little way. Besides, the freshness of the
morning is all lost on you there. Now, set Marion a good example, and
she will, in turn, enliven me later."

So adjured, I consented to drive to the Fifteen-mile House with Major
Favraud, and Duganne glided into the coach in my stead, to take my place
and play _vis-a-vis_ to Sylphy, who, as usual, was selected as
traveling-companion on this occasion, "to take kear of de young ladies."

"I am so glad I have you all to myself once more, Miss Harz! I feel now
that we are fast friends again. And I wanted to tell you, while I could
speak of her, how much my poor wife liked you. (The time will come when
I must not, _dare_ not, you know.) But for circumstances, she would have
urged you to become our guest, or even in-dweller; but you know how it
all was! I need not feign any longer, nor apologize either."

"It must have been that she saw how lovely and _spirituelle_ I found
_her_," I said, "and could not bear to be outdone in consideration, nor
to owe a debt of social gratitude. She knew so little of me. But these
affinities are electric sometimes, I must believe."

"Yes, there is more of that sort of thing on earth, perhaps, 'than is
dreamed of in our philosophy'--antagonism and attraction are always
going on among us unconsciously."

"I am inclined to believe so from my own experience," I replied,
vaguely, thinking, Heaven knows, of any thing at the moment rather than
of him who sat beside me.

"Your mind is on Wentworth, I perceive," he said, softly; after a short
pause, "now give up your dream for a little while and listen to this
sober reality--sober to-day, at least," he added, with a light laugh.
"By-the-way, talking of magnetism, do you know, Miss Harz, I think you
are the most universally magnetic woman I ever saw? All the men fall in
love with you, and the women don't hate you for it, either."

"How perfectly the last assertion disproves the first!" I replied; "but
I retract, I will not, even for the sake of a syllogism, abuse my own
sex; women are never envious except when men make them so, by casting
down among them the golden apple of admiration."

"I know one man, at least, who never foments discord in this way!
Wentworth, from the beginning, had eyes and ears for no one but
yourself, yet I never dreamed the drama would be enacted so speedily; I
own I was as much in the dark as anybody."

I could not reply to this _badinage_, as in h