“_17th._--I have broken the ice at last. What a little Puritan she is! And yet I know that she loves me, with the regular Haidee or Zuleika sort of devotion: would like to kneel at my feet and offer me tiresome flowers, when I was absorbed in the classic fogies, and all that sort of thing. A long interview on the Esplanade this afternoon. I beat the ground with the greatest discretion; for it would have been the easiest thing in the world to frighten her. It must be a marriage--a _bonâ fide_ marriage, secret, of course. She won’t object to that. But upon the other point I can see she would be inflexible. Those quiet people are always obstinate. Ay di me, my pretty Susy, I fear that you and I must say Good-bye. And I am really over head and ears in that dismal pit. I am most absurdly fond of her; that’s the worst of it. Yes, we must say Good-bye. The catechisms in the rector’s parlour and the Sunday-school have done their work, and Susan Turner will be a drudge all her life rather than surrender those ridiculous prejudices which it is the fashion to implant in the minds of rustic youth. _Addio_, my pretty Susan. I cannot imagine anything more delightful than our quiet walks in the cold gray twilight; I cannot conceive any eyes--out of a Murillo--so beautiful as those brown orbs of yours--orbs is the proper phrase, I think, when a fellow is sentimental;--but the price demanded is too heavy. One may buy gold in too dear a market; and ten years hence, with blighted prospects, and half-a-dozen children, I might grow tired of my white doe of what’s-its-name, and fancy a blue-eyed Greuze--how wonderful that man was in his manipulations of violet-hued pupils swimming in enamelled whiteness!--instead of my Murillo.