His eyes ought to have been more expressive, for they had a good deal of duty to do; his pertinacious gaze scarcely left Helen's face when he was in her presence, and he seemed to consider this homage quite sufficiently expressive, without translating it verbally. Riding by her rein in Rotten-row, lounging in Lady Mildred's drawing-room for hours of an afternoon--the moody suitor was always the same silent, sulky, self-satisfied statue of Plutus. If the real truth had been known, I believe he would have preferred doing all the wooing by proxy. No amount of coldness on Miss Vavasour's part would have checked the Earl in his obstinate determination to win her; but it must be confessed that he did not meet with much discouragement. If a purely conventional marriage had been proposed to Helen, some months ago, she would probably have rejected it with much indignation and scorn; but things were altered now. Women, as well as men, turn readily to ambition--never so readily as when love has just been thwarted--and the demoiselle, though proud as Lucifer, was not too proud to be ambitious. The little she had seen of her admirer had not impressed her very favourably; but no active dislike was working the other way. She knew how eagerly matrons and maidens had striven and schemed to attain the Clydesdale coronet--it was, in truth, better worth wearing than some Grand Ducal crowns--there was a certain triumph in the consciousness that she had only to stretch out her little hand to place it on her brows. "There's nothing like competition," they say; the maxim holds good in other things beside commerce and Civil Service examinations. I believe that there is hardly any folly, short of sin--let us be generous, and make that possible exception--to which a woman may not be tempted, if she is once thoroughly imbued with the spirit of rivalry. There is no end to the absurdities that they will commit, when this emulous devil possesses them. I have seen a most excellent young person, ordinarily a model of demure propriety, attempt to vault over high timber, and come thereat to grief absolutely unutterable, sooner than be beaten by a companion better versed in gymnastics, who had just performed the feat safely and gracefully, amidst general applause. I have known a fair dame--maturer, it is true, in attractions than in years--utterly ignore her habitual prudence, and compromise herself gravely by waltzing thrice almost consecutively with the same partner, simply because she alone could induce that languid hussar to break an antiterpsichorean pledge which he had entered into for no earthly reason but laziness; yet, on her purity of principle and honesty of intention, I would peril the residue of my life--or, what is more to the purpose--of my patrimony.