He was determined not to hear anything, and she had to leave it so. It was with surprise that she observed how indifferently she finally acquiesced in being so cruelly misunderstood by him. In the deadened state of her feelings, she was not then able to appreciate the entire change in the nature of her sentiments which that indifference showed. Love, though rooted in the past, depends upon the surrounding atmosphere for the breath of continued life, and he had surrounded her with the stifling vapors of disgust until her love had succumbed and withered. She found that his exhibitions of conceit and insipidity did not affect her in the same way as before. Her sensations were no longer sharp and poignant, but chiefly a dull shame and sense of disgrace that she had loved him. She met his attentions with a coldly passive manner, which gave him the liveliest satisfaction. The cure was succeeding past all expectation; but he had about time for one more stroke, which would make a sure thing of it. He prepared the way by dropping hints that he had been writing some verses of late; and finally, with the evident idea that she would be flattered, gave out that his favorite theme was her own charms, and that she might, perhaps, before long receive some tributes from his muse. Her protests he laughed away as the affectations of modesty. Now Hunt had never actually written a line of verse in his life, and had no intention of beginning. He was simply preparing a grand move. From the poet's corner of rural newspapers, and from comic collections, he clipped several specimens of the crudest sort of sentimental trash in rhyme. These he took to the local newspaper, and arranged for their insertion at double advertising rates. A few days later, he bustled into the parlor, smirking in his most odious manner, and, coming up to Annie, thrust an open newspaper before her, marked in one corner to call attention to several stanzas “Written for the 'Express.' To A--E G----D.” With sinking of heart she took the paper, after ineffectually trying to refuse it, and Hunt sat down before her with a supremely complacent expression, to await her verdict. With a faint hope that the verses might prove tolerable, she glanced down the lines. It is enough to say that they were the very worst which Hunt, after great industry, had been able to find; and there he was waiting, just the other side the paper, in a glow of expectant vanity, to receive her acknowledgments. “Well, what do you think of it? You need n't try to hide your blushes. You deserve every word of it, you know, Miss Modesty,” he said gayly. “It's very nice,” replied Annie, making a desperate effort. “I thought you 'd like it,” he said, with self-satisfied assurance. “It's queer that a fellow can't lay on the praise too thick to please a woman. By the way, I sent around a copy to Miss Roberts, signed with my initials. I thought you 'd like to have her see it.”