“Very respectable! Did you say that to insult me, Carl? For you know I am not what prudes and fools call very respectable, and I don’t want to be! Don’t you dare to taunt me, Carl! You will try to marry that Miss Meredyth,” she goes on in a sharp voice, her rather ponderous foot beating a tattoo on the velvet pile; “but it will be only for her money. Oh, you cannot deceive me! I, who know each turn of your mind, who read you like an open book! And for an excuse for your paltry, interested motives, you lie there, and talk to me of her--_respectability_. Good heavens! I begin to feel contempt for you--a contempt all fellows deserve when they are ready to sell themselves to the highest bidder!” A flush slowly mounts into the man’s pale cheeks, and he bites his lips hard as he listens to her insolent tone, but he is too lazy by nature to be roused quickly into recrimination, and he cares too little for her to take much heed of her words or contemptuous gestures. “Flora, you are going too far,” he says very quietly, with a callousness that goes far to irritate her more. “You forget whom you are speaking to. Your noble admirers may bow down to your tempers, but I won’t. I am too proud to subject myself to them, and too indolent to retort, so, as you are not too amiable, I will wish you good-night, and when we meet again, I hope you will be more pleasant to look at, and to speak to.” “You shan’t go, Carl! you and I have been together for three years, and I _won’t_ have you marry that girl. I’ll forbid the banns, and make such a scandal in the church that all London will ring with it.” Carlton Conway looks up at her, and taps his well varnished boot with his silver-headed cane. “Pshaw, and why?” he asks with an accent of surprise. Miss Fitzallan regards him fixedly and passionately, then throws herself down tragically on her knees by his side. “Because I love you, Carl.”