"I have done that for some time," he replied, "but you know how perfectly hopeless our love is; and yet," and his voice deepened and his face flushed with enthusiasm, "I am happier loving hopelessly and knowing that I am loved, than I have ever been before. Forgive me, Frank, but I do not feel for you as I should have done had you behaved differently. You had no right to let me suppose that she had accepted you when the subject had never been breathed between you. Your conscience must tell you that you have acted in an unworthy manner towards us both." "Grandon," I said, sententiously, "my conscience works on a system utterly incomprehensible to an ordinary intelligence, and I am quite satisfied with it. I will have a metaphysical discussion with you on the matter on some other occasion. Meantime you think Ursula has decided on preferring the ruin and disgrace of the Broadhem family to a _mariage de convenance_ either with me or any one else?" "I did not know it was a question of disgrace," said Grandon, "and I am quite sure that Lady Ursula will do the right thing. I would rather not discuss the subject any further; we shall certainly not agree, and I am afraid that we might become more widely estranged than I should wish. Here is breakfast. It was you who last asked me to bury this unhappy subject, it is my turn now to make the same request. I wish to heaven it had never arisen between us." "What a lucky fellow you are!" said I, looking at him with the eye of a philosopher; "now you would never imagine yourself to be one of the most enviable men in London, with the most charming of women and the most devoted of friends ready to sacrifice themselves at your feet--she _incomprise_, I _incompris_." "Don't trifle," said Grandon, sternly, interrupting me; "my patience is not inexhaustible." "Luckily mine is," said I, with my mouth full of grilled salmon, "otherwise I should not be the right stuff for a social missionary. Apropos, you have never asked me what I have been doing in that line; nor told me what you thought of the long letter I wrote you from Flityville. Did you get me the answers to those questions?" "No," he replied, "I must honestly tell you, Frank, that it pains me to discuss so serious a subject with one who makes so fair and earnest a pretence of having deep convictions as you do, and whose acts are so diametrically opposed to them; and now I must be off, for I have a committee of the House to attend."