"And yet you make an appointment with him to meet him _here_, in this place, where every one is remarked and speculated upon; here, alone, where you are without even a companion--" He paused, and with a light, mocking laugh, inexpressibly provoking, she said: "Why don't you say a 'sheep-dog'! We know the immortal Becky quite as well as you do. In the first place, my appointment with Arthur Felton means simply nothing. I am just as likely to break it as to keep it; to go to London, or Vienna, or Timbuctoo, to-morrow, if the fancy takes me; or to stay here, and have him told I'm not at home when he calls, only that would please his father; and Mr. Felton is about the only male creature of my acquaintance whom I don't want to please. In the second place, I don't care one straw who remarks me, or what they remark, and have no notion of allowing public opinion to take precedence of my pleasure." She laughed again, a saucy laugh which he did not like, gave him another glance and another flicker of her eyelash, and said: "Why, how extremely preposterous you are! You know well, if I cared what people could, would, might, or should say, I would not allow you to visit me every day, and I would not drive you out alone like this." The perfect unconcern and freedom of the remark took Routh by surprise, and disconcerted him as completely as its undeniable truth. He kept silence; and Mrs. Ireton P. Bembridge, amused at the blank expression of his countenance, burst into a hearty fit of laughter this time. "I tell you I don't care about public opinion. All the men admire me, no matter what I do; and all the women hate me, and would hate me all the same, for my beauty--which I entirely appreciate, you know--if I made my life as dull and decorous, as miserable, squalid, and canting, as I make it pleasant, and joyous, and 'not the thing.' Neither men nor women dare to insult me; and if they did, I should know how to meet the emergency, I assure you, though I am not at all clever. I am only courageous--'plucky,' your English ladies call it, I think, in the last new style of stable and barrack-room talk. I am that; I don't think that I could be afraid of anything or any one." "Not of a man who really loved you with all the force and passion of his heart?" said Routh, in a hoarse whisper, and bending a fierce dark look upon her. "Certainly not," she replied, lightly; but the colour rose in her cheek, and her breath came a little quicker. "I don't believe in people loving with passion and force, and all that sort of thing. It is pretty to talk about on balconies, and it looks well on paper, in a scrawly hand, running crookedly up into the corner, and with plenty of dashes, and no date--" And here she laughed again, and touched up the grays. Routh still kept silence, and still his dark look was bent upon her.