“We shall expect to see you, Mr. Desmond,” she said, at the very last, when he had brought her _Punch_ and a damp copy of the newly issued _Areopagus_. Ah, how many a youthful scribbler’s ardour has been damped by those cold clammy papers, deadly chill as the skin of the cobra, and venomous as his sting! “We shall expect to see you--soon,” repeated the lady, with that pretty air of insistence which is so charming in an elegant woman. “But, my dear Mrs. Jerningham, I did not say I would come. I said, I will come, if I can get a holiday.” “As if any one could refuse you a holiday! But I will not allow the arrangement to be left in that vague manner. Shall we see you in a week?” “I fear not.” “In a fortnight?” “I scarcely like to promise anything till this month is over. There are so many rows on the political _tapis_; and we are bound to go in for an analysis of all the rows. And there is Cumberland’s fourteenth volume of “Catharine II.;” that is a book I am pledged to review myself.” “Pledged to the author?” “No; to the publisher. Do you think anyone on the _Areopagus_ ever writes a review to oblige an author? I think, in three weeks, I may be free; and if----” “Oh, pray do not imperil the fortunes of the _Areopagus_ for any caprice of mine! I am sure I should be immensely distressed if my pleasure interfered with the prompt notice of Mr. Cumberland’s ‘Catharine,’” cried Mrs. Jerningham, with supreme hauteur, and with the injured air of a woman who thinks your regard for her must be very small, if at her behest you refuse to jeopardize a paltry newspaper which cost only twenty thousand pounds or so to establish, or the reputation of a trumpery author, who has only given the labour of a lifetime to his absurd book. The Dover express moved away before Mr. Desmond could reply to the lady’s angry speech, and left him standing on the platform, with a smile, that was half-sad, half-cynical, upon his face. “They are all alike,” he said to himself; “beautiful, delightful, unreasonable, and profoundly selfish. How well that tone of _grande dame_ becomes her! How lovely she looked just now, with that crimson flush of wounded pride, and that angry light in her eyes! What a pity it is that a woman cannot believe in the regard of a man who is not ready to behave like an idiot in all the affairs of life for her pleasure! ‘You pretend that you love me,’ cries offended Beauty, ‘and yet you won’t forfeit a colonelcy in the Life Guards in order to attend me to a garden-party at Miss Burdett Coutts’s! You declare that you adore me, and yet refuse to make a bonfire of your father’s family-seat for my amusement!’”