remarked that
he was thinking over his offers and hadn't yet decided which was the
best. As the fact that he has been refused by seven women is well-known,
we really rather admire the persistence of his pose as a lady-killer.
He has even been known to write passionate letters to himself, in an
assumed hand, and drop cleverly-manufactured tears here and there upon
them, to give an air of greater realism to these amorous masterpieces,
which he uses as a proof of his wild stories of conquest. When dry, the
tears look most life-like; of course it is a dodge that every schoolgirl
knows, but I have never known a man have recourse to it before, and hope
never to again!

Both Cyprian and Valerian gave as the reason for their continued
bachelorhood, the fact that they were too comfortable as bachelors and
had never felt the need of a wife. The latter added that if he could
find just _the_ girl, he would think it over, but as matters stood he
preferred certainty to chance and was taking no risks. Between
ourselves, both these two are very self-satisfied and egotistical
persons, and I don't think any woman has lost much by their resolve.

The fourteenth man was Bayard, who belongs to a very exasperating type
of philanderer. Most women of the world have met and been bored by him
to their sorrow. It is his grievous habit to go about professing a
yearning for matrimony of the most ideal kind, and confiding at great
length to safely attached young matrons how he longs to find a home in
one good woman's heart, and what a great, pure, passionate, wild love he
is capable of. There is something rather engaging about him, and his
pose is naturally very attractive to unsuspecting spinsters. He is
always getting desperately entangled, but makes a great parade of his
poverty when the _affaire_ reaches the critical point, and wriggles out
successfully--generally without any too unpleasant explanation. If,
however, things have gone too far for this, he can always make good his
escape under cover of the 'I love you too much, darling, to drag you
down to poverty' plea. How many girls, wounded to the heart's core, have
listened to this hoary lie when they are more than willing to be poor,
if but with him, willing to economise and save, and forego for his sake.

Not, of course, that Bayard and his like inspire such devotion; I mean
that the essentials of this particular excuse are given by very many
unmarried men nowadays as the reason of their s