"Go in and win, if you can," said Dopsy. "It won't be the first time you've tried to cut me out." Dopsy, embittered by the sense of failure, determined on new tactics. Hitherto she had been all sparkle--now she melted into a touching sadness. "What a delicious old room this is," she murmured, glancing round at the bookshelves and dark panelling, the high wide chimney piece with its coat-of-arms, in heraldic colours, flashing and gleaming against a background of brown oak. "I cannot help feeling wretched at the idea that next week I shall be far away from this dear place--in dingy, dreary London. Oh, Mr. Hamleigh,"--detaining him while she selected one particular piece of sugar from the basin he was handing her--"don't you detest London?" "Not absolutely. I have sometimes found it endurable." "Ah, you have your clubs--just the one pleasantest street in all the great overgrown city--and that street lined with palaces, whose doors are always standing open for you. Libraries, smoking rooms, billiard-tables, perfect dinners, and all that is freshest and brightest in the way of society. I don't wonder men like London. But for women it has only two attractions--Mudie, and the shop-windows!" "And the park--the theatres--the churches--the delight of looking at other women's gowns and bonnets. I thought that could never pall?" "It does, though. There comes a time when one feels weary of everything," said Dopsy, pensively stirring her tea, and so fixing Mr. Hamleigh with her conversation that he was obliged to linger--yea, even to set down his own teacup on an adjacent table, and to seat himself by the charmer's side. "I thought you so delighted in the theatres," he said. "You were full of enthusiasm about the drama the night I first dined here." "Was I?" demanded Dopsy, naïvely. "And now I feel as if I did not care a straw about all the plays that were ever acted--all the actors who ever lived. Strange, is it not, that one can change so, in one little fortnight." "The change is an hallucination. You are fascinated by the charms of a rural life, which you have not known long enough for satiety. You will be just as fond of plays and players when you get back to London." "Never," exclaimed Dopsy. "It is not only my taste that is changed. It is myself. I feel as if I were a new creature." "What a blessing for yourself and society if the change were radical," said Mr. Hamleigh, within himself; and then he answered, lightly. "Perhaps you have been attending the little chapel at Boscastle, secretly imbibing the doctrines of advanced Methodism, and this is a spiritual awakening." "No," sighed Dopsy, shaking her head, pensively, as she gazed at her teacup. "It is an utter change. I cannot make it out. I don't think I shall ever care for gaiety--parties--theatres--dress--again." "Oh, this must be the influence of the Methodists."