"Nothing can be more than full, very well," said Elizabeth contemptuously. "I never want _my_ words to be lost on the outside of a conversation." "You think a great deal of your words," said her cousin. "I want other people should." "You do! Well -- I never expect them to think much of mine." "That's not true, Rose." "It isn't?" "No; and your smile when you said it spoke that it wasn't." "Well, I don't care, they _are_ thought enough of," said Rose, half crying. Elizabeth walked to the window and stood within the curtain, looking out into the street; and Rose bestowed her pouting lips and brimful eyes upon the full view of the fire. "What's made you so cross?" she said after a quarter of an hour, when the tears were dried. "I am not cross." "Did you ever see anybody so amusing as Rufus Landholm?" "Yes, he's amusing. -- I don't like people that are too amusing." "How can anybody be _too_ amusing?" "He can make it too much of his business." "Who? -- Rufus?" "No, anybody. You asked how _anybody_ could." "Well I dont see how you can think he is too amusing." "Why, that is all you care for in a man." "It isn't! I care for a great deal else. What do _you_ care for?" "I don't know, I am sure," said Elizabeth; "but I should say, everything else." "Well, I think people are very stupid that aren't amusing," said Rose. Which proposition the ladies illustrated for another quarter of an hour. The gentlemen came in then, one after another, but Elizabeth did not move from her window. "I have something of yours in my possession, Miss Haye," said Rufus, coming to the outside of the curtain within which she stood. "What?" said Elizabeth unceremoniously. "Your father." "What are you going to do with him?" Rufus laughed a little; and Winthrop remarked there was nothing like straightforward dealing to confound a manoeuvrer. "I have a desire to put him out of my hands, into yours," said Rufus; -- "but then, I have also a desire to make him fast there." "My bracelet!" said Elizabeth. It had a likeness of Mr. Haye in cameo. "Where did you get it?" "Where you left it." "Where was that?" "On the table, at the left hand of your plate, covered by your napkin." Elizabeth stretched out her hand for it. "Not so fast -- I have it in my possession, as I told you, and I claim a reward for recovering it from its ignoble condition." "I shall set my own conditions then," said Elizabeth. "I will let anybody put it on, who will do me the pleasure to explain it first." "Explain?" said Rufus, looking in a sort of comical doubt at the cameo; -- "I see the features of Mr. Haye, which never need explanation to me." "Not in nature; but do you understand them when they look so brown on a white ground?" "They look very natural!" said Rufus eyeing the cameo. "That is to say, you do not understand them?" "Pardon me, _you_ are the person most difficult to understand."