escriptions never were written before.
Listen!"

Hamilton, who hated descriptions of scenery at any time, and was in his
most direct and imperative temper, stood the infliction but a moment,
then asked her attention. She closed the book over her finger and smiled
charmingly.

"Forgive me for boring you," she said graciously. "But you know my
passion for letters; and if truth must be told, I am a little piqued. I
have not laid eyes on you for a fortnight. Not but that I am used to
your lapses of memory by this time," she added, with a sigh.

Hamilton went straight to the point. He told her the exact reason for
the necessary breach, omitting nothing but the episode of Mrs. Reynolds;
one cause of reproach was as much as a man could be expected to furnish
an angry woman.

For Mrs. Croix was very angry. At first she had pressed her hand against
her heart as if about to faint, and Hamilton had hastily extracted the
salts; but the next moment she was on her feet, towering and expanding
like an avenging queen about to order in her slaves with scimitars and
chargers.

"Do you mean," she cried, "that I am flouted, flung aside like an old
cravat? I? With half the men in America in love with me? Good God, sir!
I have known from the beginning that you would tire, but I thought to be
on the watch and save my pride. How dare you come like this? Why could
you not give me warning? It is an outrage. I would rather you had killed
me."

"I am sorry I have blundered," said Hamilton, humbly. "But how in
Heaven's name can a man know how a woman will take anything? I had such
respect for your great intelligence that I thought it due you to treat
you as I would a man--"

"A man?" exclaimed Mrs. Croix. "Treat me like a man! Of all the
supremely silly things I ever heard one of your sex say, that is the
silliest. I am not a man, and you know it."

Hamilton hastened to assure her that she was deliberately averting her
intelligence from his true meaning. "You have never doubted my sincerity
for a moment," he added. "You surely know what it will cost me never to
see you again. There is but one cause under heaven that could have
brought me to you with this decision. You may believe in my regret--to
use a plain word--when you reflect upon all that you have been to me."

He was desperately afraid that her anger would dissolve in tears, and he
be placed in a position from which he was not sure of emerging with a
clear conscience,--and he dar