"You don't ask in what way I have been so unlucky. Why don't you? Have you no curiosity?" "I never like to seem inquisitive," answers Esther, coldly, hoping that he does not notice how the white hands that lie on her lap are trembling. "Do you recollect my telling you that I had made a great fool of myself once?" "Yes." "Do you care to hear about it, or do you not?" pulling at his drooping moustache, in some irritation at her feigned indifference. "Yes, I care," she answers, lighting up an eager, mobile face--fear, shyness, and the sense of the impropriety of the situation all ceding to strong curiosity. "Well, it was about a woman, of course. _Cela va sans dire;_ a man never can get into a scrape without a woman to help him, any more than he can be born, or learn his A B C." "Was she handsome?" looking up, and speaking quickly. That is always the first question a woman asks about a rival. I do not know why, I am sure, as many of the greatest mischiefs that have been done on earth have been done by ugly women. Rousseau's Madame d'Houdetot squinted ferociously. "Pretty well. She had a thundering good figure, and knew how to use her eyes. By-the-by" (with an anxious discontent in his tone), "so do you. I often wish you did not; I hate being able to trace one point of resemblance between you and her." "Did she refuse you?" asks Esther, hastily, too anxious for the sequel of the story to think of resenting the accusation made against her eyes. "Not she! I should not have been the one to blame her if she had; one cannot quarrel with people for their tastes. She swore she liked me better than any one else in the world; that she would go down to Erebus with me, be flayed alive for me--all the protestations usual in such cases, in fact, I suppose," he ends bitterly. "And threw you over?" says Essie, leaning forward with lips half apart, and her breast rising and falling in short, quick undulations. "Exactly; had meant nothing else all along. I filled only the pleasant and honourable situation of decoy duck to lure on shyer game, and when the bird was limed--such a bird, too! a great, heavy, haw-haw brute in the Carabineers, with a face like a horse--she pitched me away as coolly as you would pitch an old shoe--or as you would pitch _me_, I dare say, if you had the chance." "And what did you do?" asks Essie, breathlessly, her great eyes, black as death, fastened on his face. St. John smiles--a smile half fierce, half amused.