"My dear Miss Altifiorla," he said. "I really don't see that you have any reason to blow me up as you do about 'poor Cecilia.' I do not think that poor Cecilia has had it at all hotter than she has deserved; and when you tell me that I have been awfully cruel to the poor girl, you seem to forget that the poor girl began the war by being awfully cruel to me. If you and I should ever come to know each other, you may be sure that I shall never treat any woman well because she has treated me badly. It's a kind of gallantry I cannot understand, and must make a man's conduct quite indifferent to the sex generally. If you're to treat all alike, whether they run straight or bolt, why shouldn't they all bolt? It would come to the same thing in the end. There is Dick Ross been making himself uncommonly disagreeable on the same subject. I don't mind your lecturing me a little,--chiefly because you don't think it; but I'll be hanged if I take it from him. He has not done so very well himself that he is entitled to blow up anyone. "Mind you write and tell me what happens over at St. David's." (Mrs. Holt lived in Exeter at St. David's.) "I shall be glad to know whether that respectable person, Mr. Western, comes back again. I don't think she'll have a good time if he does, and if he don't I sha'n't break my heart." Then he put his pen down and sat for a while thinking what should be his last paragraph. Should he put an end to all his doubts and straightway make his offer, or should he dally a little longer and still keep the power in his own hands? At last he said to himself that even if he wrote it his letter would not go till to-morrow morning, and he would have the night to think about it. This consideration got the better of his prudence and he did write it, simply beginning a new sentence on the page. "Don't you think that you and I know each other well enough to make a match of it? There is a question for you to answer on your own behalf, instead of blowing me up for any cruelty to Cecilia Holt." Then he signed his name, "Yours ever, F. G."