'How you do go on!' sighed Jeff, wiping his eyebrows with his cambric handkerchief. 'One never knows when you're in earnest. But really don't you think we shall make a first-rate match?' 'Gracious Powers! Do you know that there are probably not two men living for whom the Countess Almara would not be more than a match?' 'Exactly. In fact, there is only one who could mate with her on equal terms, and--well, I happen to be he.' Jeff uttered this with perfect modesty and conviction. 'My young friend, your chances with that young lady are not hopeless; they are ridiculous. She actually cannot maintain gravity at the thought of you. Must I reveal that she speaks of the "pauvre enfant," that she is convinced you are only four feet high, and that she declares she frightened you terribly in the fog this morning? Eloquent looks and sympathy of souls indeed!' and I laughed rudely. 'I don't believe a word you say,' replied Jeff, laughing also. 'But there is one thing that I do begin to believe.' 'What is that?' 'That I've got a rival, eh? ha, ha, ha!' 'You have an entirely too lively imagination,' was my cold reply. 'Ah, Campbell, you are very deep--very. If I were less sure of my countess than I am I declare I should feel uneasy.' 'Merely for curiosity's sake, where do you find encouragement?' 'You were in earnest, then, when you said this morning that you knew less than I about women? Your difficulty is, probably, that you regard woman as a species of man, when in fact no woman who amounts to anything has a particle of masculinity about her. They may pretend to it sometimes, just to bamboozle fellows who are inexperienced; but they drop it in the presence of a man who sees through them.' 'Through their backs. I understand.' 'Exactly. Well, then, my countess, when I have my eye upon her, is her simple womanly self, because she knows my insight is unerring; but with you I'll wager she talks literature, and art, and morals, and things of that kind, eh?' 'I will not deny it, Jeff.' 'Of course she did, and why? Because she knew she could make you believe she really cared for such things; and, womanlike, she couldn't resist humbugging you.' 'And her laughing at you, her contemptuous allusions to your stature and so forth were also impositions upon my naïve ignorance of the sex?' 'Indeed, my dear Campbell, they were.' 'It is me, then, and not you that she considers ridiculous?'