“‘No, sir!’ so I see. You can write, and talk, and have me about--it isn’t so much as if Ponto had come into the room instead of me. I have a good mind to try whether there is a way of disturbing you a little. I shall sit here close by you, and keep scolding. Yes, I see. You only smile quietly at this, and go on writing. I am provoked! I want you to talk with me; want you to care more about me than about this old ‘commercial pen’ of yours. Will you?” “I can’t,” laughing. “Then I will steal your pen. I will hold your hand--thus--” * * * * * _Evening._ He stole my pen, and threw it to the other side of the table. He held my hand, and called me “an obstinate thing! but a dear good girl--a _dear_ good girl, for all that.” He would keep my hand; and soon I ceased trying to regain it--for he was telling me, in the dearest voice, what he had been reading and thinking; so that I forgot every thing but that I was happy enough to go straight away to Heaven. And I wish at this moment, Edith, that I might die--for I cannot believe that such happiness as this can last; and I would rather die than have it broken. I know what you will say. You will say that I love Mr. Cullen; and I expect that I do. I expect that I have loved him since the day that he came. And I shall never regret this, even if I find that it is only friendliness he feels for me, if I find that he loves and marries another--for my life is enriched and beautified by the new emotions, by the love of one so noble, so pure! For the present, aunt looks smilingly on, takes Mr. Cullen’s part when he and uncle are both going to ride, and both lay claims to my company. She adjusts the matter by saying, “Frederic, let her go with Alfred! He isn’t going to stay long, you know. And, besides, I want to go with you myself. So just bring my hood and cloak in from the hall, while I am finding the rest of my things.” “Yes, ‘finding the rest of your things!’ this takes a week; and this is why I like it best having Monde go with me.” But, notwithstanding uncle contends I can see that he likes best seeing me go and come with Mr. Cullen. Notwithstanding he and aunt send Mr. Cullen or me in every morning to see how it is with Paulina’s neuralgia, they are neither of them much sorry to be told that her face is still swelled out of all comeliness of shape with it, so that she will not see either of us. Her mother, by the way, says she took cold wearing such thin stockings over here the day that Mr. Cullen came. She would wear them, she says, because she wanted to pinch her feet up in her tight summer boots. “A silly puss!” said uncle, when aunt told him about it. “I wonder how a woman can imagine that any person of sense cares a fig whether her foot is like an elephant or a mouse.”