"So long as there is no prior attachment--and you assure me that there is not--I will not permit myself to despair," said Dayrell. "I tell your ladyship this in confidence. But if it could in any way be hinted to Miss Lloyd that I have accepted her decision as final, and, while deeply hurt by her rejection of me, have no intention of troubling her further, I think my cause might be somewhat benefited thereby." "Pardon me, but I hardly see the force of your suggestion." "My dear Lady Dudgeon, it is one of the characteristics of your sex to regard a rejected suitor with a certain amount of tendresse. They say to themselves, 'Here is something that might be mine if I would only hold out my hand to take it.' So long as it is there for the having, they don't care to accept it; but when they have reason to think that they are about to lose it, they will sometimes make a snatch at it rather than let it go altogether--or, perhaps I ought to say, rather than let it fall into the hands of another." In this matter Captain Dayrell judged Eleanor by himself. He was twice as anxious to win her, now that she had declined his attentions, as he had been before. Not that he would ever have dreamed of asking Miss Lloyd to become his wife had she been other than the heiress she was. He knew too well what was due both to himself and to society. The suggested hint was duly given to Eleanor. It made her intercourse with Captain Dayrell, during his stay at Stammars, more easy and pleasant than it might otherwise have been, but beyond that it had no effect whatever. When the captain went back to town he was not quite so sanguine of success as he had been a week previously; but being of a persevering disposition, and having no belief in the immutability of a woman's _No_, he was still very far from considering his case as hopeless. Olive Deane had three days' leave of absence from her duties at Easter. She went by invitation to spend the time with her aunt and cousin at Pembridge. She had seen neither of them during the two months she had been at Lady Dudgeon's. Matthew Kelvin had once or twice sent his chief clerk to transact business with the baronet, but had never put in an appearance himself. Could it be that he dreaded the possibility of meeting Miss Lloyd? was the question Olive sometimes asked herself; but it was a question to which there was no likelihood of her ever obtaining an answer. Olive's heart fluttered strangely as she knocked at the familiar door. Absence had in no wise weakened her love for her cousin. Watered with her secret tears, its roots seemed only to grow stronger and to cling more tightly round her heart. "Why should my life be made miserable for the love of this man?" she sometimes asked herself. "He cares nothing for me--he never will care anything for me." But in other moods she would say: "He will learn to love me yet. Such a love as mine must have a magnetism in it strong enough to draw to itself the object of its desires."