“How can you be so foolish, Mr. Baldwin, so very foolish as to talk to me in that way. Are you really so blind as not to see that to you are more like another Harry than—than—anything of that sort? Oh! what a pity you have done this—said this to me! The only friend I had. And now you have put a stop to it all. I can never again feel comfortable with you. You have spoilt it all. It is very, very unkind of you!” And she ended her strange, incoherent speech by bursting into tears. Poor Geoffrey already, its soon as the words were uttered, aware of his egregious mistake and penitent to the last degree, forthwith set himself down as a monster of inconsiderateness and cruelty. Her tears altogether for the moment put out of sight his own exceeding disappointment. Hee only thought how best to console her. “Oh, Miss Vere,” he said, “forgive me! It indeed inexcusable of me to have so startled and distressed you. I had no right so to take advantage of my position with you. I am a rough boor, I know, but I entreat you to forgive me, and forget all this. Only—only—after as time perhaps—could you never get accustomed to the idea? Must I never again allude to this? I would wait—years, if you wished it. But never?” and his voice, which he had striven to make gentle and calm, grew hoarse again in spite of his efforts. (He was not of the order of suitors, you see, who think a “no” in the first place far from discouraging. For though by no means “faint-hearted,” he was far too chivalrous to persist, and too genuinely humble-minded not to be easily repulsed.) “Never, Mr. Baldwin!” said Marion, decisively and remorselessly, with but, to tell the truth, little thought for the time, of the suffering her words were inflicting on an honest, manly heart. She was not her best self just then. Trouble and weary suspense had made her querulous sometimes, and temporarily developed in her the selfishness which, alter all, is to some extent inherent in the best of us. “Never!” she repeated. “How could you have mistaken me so? Can’t you see that I mean what I say about being different from other girls? All that sort of thing is done with for me, altogether and entirely. So please, understand, Mr. Baldwin, that what you were speaking of can never be.”