"Yes, we'll talk of that afterwards. I'll see you next week, and you'll tell me more of this new love-affair of--of _his!_ Don't stop now. I'm all out of sorts. You've upset me. I wasn't in condition. I've been doing a little too much work lately. Go now, there's a good fellow! Good-by." Then stopping suddenly--"You're sure you're not selling me, Simnel?" "I swear it!" said Simnel. "I wish to heaven you had been," said the poor girl; "but we'll see about the new business next week. I think we'll spoil that pretty game between us, eh? There, good-by." And she set her teeth tight, and rushed from the room. "So fax so good," said Mr. Simnel, as he rode quietly home. "She's taken it almost a little too strongly. My plan now is to soften her and turn her to me. I think I have a card in my hand that will win that trick, and then--the game's my own!" CHAPTER XXIII. MR. BERESFORD IN PURSUIT. The idea suggested by Simnel, after the interview with Dr. Prater at the Flybynights, came upon Mr. Beresford with extraordinary force. It opened up to him a new train of thought, gave a complete turn to his intended course of life, afforded him matter for the deepest study and reflection. As we have already seen, he was a man with a faultless digestion, and without a scrap of heart--two qualities which had undoubtedly greatly conduced towards his success in life, and towards making him a careless, easy-going worldly philosopher. When he first saw Miss Townshend at Bissett Grange, he remembered her as a cheery little flirt whom he had met during the previous season; and finding her companionable and amusing, determined to carry on a flirtation which should serve as a pastime, and, at the break-up of the party, be consigned to that limbo already replete with similar _amourettes_. The presence of Captain Lyster, and the unmistakable evidence of his passion for the young lady, gave Mr. Beresford very little annoyance; he had a notion that, save in very exceptional cases, of which indeed he had had no experience, women had a horror of an earnest lover; that watchings and waitings, hangings on words, deep gazings into eyes, and all outward signs of that passion which induces melancholy and affords themes for poets, were as much _rococo_ and out of date as carrying a lady's glove in your hat and perpetually seeking a fight with some one on her account. He thought that women hated "dreary" lovers, and were far more likely to be won by rattle, laughter, and raillery than by the deepest devotion of a silent and sighing order. Moreover, as he was only going in for flirtation, he would make his running while it lasted, and leave the Captain to come in with the weight-carrying proprieties after he had gone.