Lenette, bashful and trembling, glowed red with shame at this discovery of (what she had believed to be) the mystery of her poverty and her pawnings. With the view of pouring a few drops of oil on the troubled waters, he began, by way of preamble, to make some disparaging remarks concerning his fiancée at Bayreuth. "She reads too much, and doesn't work enough. I only wish she could have the benefit of a few lessons from _you_ in housekeeping. And really, a lady such as you, with so many attractions (quite unaware of them, too, herself), so much patience, such wonderful diligence and assiduity, should have a very different kind of household than this place for her sphere of action." Her hand was by this time lying still in the stocks--the close arrest--of his; her wings and her tongue, as well as her hands, were tied and fettered by that fainthearted incapacity of self-assertion which is born of the sense of poverty. When women were in question, Mr. Everard's longings and likings paid no heed to boundary-marks; but rather strove hard to obliterate them, and get rid of them altogether. Most men, in the wild, unreasoning whirl of their appetites, are like the jay, which tears the carnation to tatters in order to get at its seeds. Upon her downcast eyes he now riveted a long gaze of fondness, not withdrawing it, however, when she raised them up; and, by dint of keeping his eyes very wide open, and thinking with great vividness on pathetic and touching subjects, he managed to squeeze out about as much water as would have sufficed to make an end of a humming bird of the smaller sort. In him, as in a fine actor, all false emotions became for the time real and genuine; and when he flattered any one, he at once began to respect him. As soon as he felt there were tears enough in his eyes, and sighs enough in his breast, he asked her if she had _any idea_ what was causing them. She looked innocently, and with kindly alarm, into those eyes of his, and her own began to overflow. This greatly encouraged him, and he said, "It is the fact that _you_ have not such a happy lot as you deserve." Ah! selfish pigmy! at such a moment you might have spared this poor, anxious, trembling soul, sinking, well nigh, in an ocean of tears for all the long, long past. But he knew no sorrow save of the theatrical, the transient, the petty, and the sham sort; and so he spared her not. Yet that which he had expected would prove the bridge from his heart to hers, namely, sorrow, became, on the contrary, the portcullis barrier between them. A dance, or some _joyful_ tumult of the senses would have brought him further with this _commonplace_, every-day, honest, and upright woman than three pailfuls of selfish tears. His hopes rose high, as he laid his flowery, sorrow-laden head upon his hands, down into her lap.