"Is he a fool?" she thought, "or only insensible? Thank you," she added aloud. "I presume they would be the same, but my question remains unanswered." "True," he replied, smiling; "I am very rude, but my attention was so engrossed by this most lovely Diana. I will endeavour to answer you: were _I_ a happy man, whom one so fair as yourself, Lady Dora, expected impatiently, I should not choose the commonplace mode of transporting myself; but, borrowing the wings of the wind (that is, supposing them disengaged,) flutter to her feet." "Mr. Tremenhere is pleased to be facetious," answered Lady Dora, pettishly. "Pardon me, I never was more serious. I am trying to convey to your mind how great my impatience would be; but you have interrupted, without hearing all I had to say. If fate and inclination together, had cast me upon the waters--we will say, for example, in a yacht--why, I would summon to my aid some fairy spell, and, like the peterel, run over the surface of the waters, from the blue Mediterranean to the dusky Seine, till I found myself, web-footed, and incapable of running thence, on the polished floors of your hotel!" There is nothing more disagreeable than to have taken up a weapon to wound, and suddenly to find the point in your own bosom. She felt he was laughing at her. "Mamma," she cried, "did Lady Lysson show you a letter she received to-day?" "My love?" asked her mother, looking up from a book she had been perusing. Lady Dora repeated the question. "Yes, his lordship wrote much pleased with his cruise." "I trust Lord Randolph Gray is quite well?" inquired Tremenhere, with perfect composure. "Lady Lysson mentioned, in my presence, that he was shortly expected from Malta." "Quite well!" ejaculated Lady Dora, amazed at his coolness; "but you are mistaken about his locality, Mr. Tremenhere; he was at Florence when she last heard from him." "Indeed! Then," he continued, laughing, "I will sketch him as the peterel of my idea; shall I?" "He will feel flattered, doubtless, at any notice from your pencil, Mr. Tremenhere," was her cold reply. Her mother was again deep in her book. "I have an ornithological thought in my brain, hatching, Lady Dora; I propose sketching all my friends, _à la plume_." "What will you make me?" she asked, hoping to change the style of their previous conversation. "You!" and he lowered his tone, and looked fixedly at her. She could not withdraw her gaze, he was sketching her brow--"You!--you shall be the fabled weevil, and I, the sick man, fit to die, turning my face to you to implore for life. Do not turn your head away, and thus bid that sickness be to death; but, extracting my heart's disease, with your sweet breath, fly upwards to heaven, and burn it out by the sun that we may so live together!" "You must be mad!" she involuntarily cried, turning her eyes hastily to where her mother sat. But _she_ had heard nothing; they were at some distance from her, and he spoke so low.