“No, but—but you won’t understand!” he answered, almost querulously. He was quite chapfallen. “You don’t listen to me. I want to marry you. I want you to be my wife. Your father said I might come to you, and—and ask you. And—and you’ll say ‘Yes,’ won’t you? That’s a good girl!” “Never!” she answered. He stared at her, turning red. “Oh, nonsense!” he stammered. And he made as if he would go nearer. “You don’t mean it. My dear girl! Listen to me! I do love you! I do indeed! And I—I tell you what it is, I never loved any woman——” But she looked at him in such a way that he could not go on. “Do not say those things!” she said. And her austerity was terrible to him. “And go, if you please. My father, if he sent you to me——” “He did!” “Then he did not,” she replied with dignity, “understand my feelings.” “But—but you must marry someone,” he complained. “You know—you’re making a great fuss about nothing!” “Nothing!” she cried, her eyes sparkling. “You insult me, Mr. Flixton, and——” “If a man may not kiss the girl he wants to marry——” “If she does not want to marry him?” “But it’s not as bad as that,” he pleaded. “No, by Jove, it’s not. You’ll not be so cruel. Come, Miss Mary, listen to me a minute. You must marry someone, you know. You are young, and I’m sure you have the right to choose——” “I’ve heard enough,” she struck in, interrupting him with something of Sir Robert’s hauteur. “I understand now what you meant, and I forgive you. But I can never be anything to you, Mr. Flixton——” “You can be everything to me,” he declared. It couldn’t, it really couldn’t be that she meant to refuse him! Finally and altogether! “But you can be nothing to me!” she answered, cruelly—very cruelly for her, but her cheek was tingling. “Nothing! Nothing! And that being so, I beg that you will leave me now.” He looked at her with a mixture of supplication, resentment, chagrin. But she showed no sign of relenting. “You really—you really do mean it?” he muttered, with a sickly smile. “Come, Miss Mary!” “Don’t! Don’t!” she cried, as if his words pained her. And that was all. “Please go! Or I shall go.” The Honourable Bob’s conceit had been so far taken out of him that he felt that he could make no farther fight. He could see no sign of relenting, and feeling that, with all his experience, he had played his cards ill, he turned away sullenly. “Oh, I will go,” he said. And he longed to add something witty and careless. But he could not add anything. He, Bob Flixton, the hero of so many _bonnes fortunes_, to be refused! He had laid his all, and _pour le bon motif_ at the feet of a girl who but yesterday was a little schoolmistress. And she had refused him! It was incredible! But, alas, it was also fact.