"I am not jealous at all," indignantly. "I only object to your saying one thing to _me_ and another to _him_." "What is the one thing I say to you?" This staggers him. "You must find me a very monotonous person if I say only one thing to you always." "I haven't found you so." "Then it--whatever it is--must be one of the most eloquent and remarkable speeches upon record. _Do_ tell it to me." "Look here, Monica," says Mr. Desmond, cautiously evading a reply: "what I want to know is--what you _see_ in Ryde. He is tall, certainly, but he is fat and effeminate, with 'a forehead villanous low.'" "Your own is very low," says Miss Beresford. "If I thought it was like _his_, I'd make away with myself. And you listen to all his stories, and believe them every one. I don't believe a single syllable he says: I never met such a bragger. To listen to him, one would think he had killed every tiger in Bengal. In my opinion, he never even saw one." "'Les absents ont toujours tort,'" quotes she, in a low, significant tone. This is the finishing stroke. "Oh! you _defend_ him," he says, as savagely almost as one of those wild beasts he has just mentioned. "In your eyes he is a hero, no doubt. I daresay all women see virtue in a man who 'talks as familiarly of roaring lions as maids of thirteen do of puppy-dogs.'" "I don't think maids of thirteen, as a rule, talk much of puppy-dogs. I'm sure Kit doesn't," says Monica, provokingly. "And really, to do Mr. Ryde justice too, I never heard him mention a roaring lion. Perhaps you are thinking of Artemus Ward's lion that goes about 'seeking whom he may devour somebody.'" She smiles in a maddening fashion. "I am thinking of Ryde," says Desmond. "I am thinking, too, how mad I was when I thought you liked me better than him. I _did_ think it, you know; but now I am _desillusionnee_. It is plain to me you are infatuated about this fellow, who is 'perfumed like a milliner' and hasn't two ideas in his head." "I can't think where you find all your quotations," says Monica, who is now seriously annoyed; "but I must ask you not to worry me any further about Mr. Ryde." "You are madly in love with him," says Desmond, choking with rage. Upon which Miss Beresford loses the last remnant of her patience, and very properly turns her back on him. The rain has ceased, but during its reign has extinguished the dying sun, which has disappeared far below the horizon. A great hush and silence has followed the petulant burst of storm, and a peace unspeakable lies on all the land. There is a little glimpse of the ocean far away beyond the giant firs, and one can see that its waves are calm, and the fishing-boats upon its bosom scarcely rock.