"But I don't believe," I said, perversely, "that I shall ever have any lover that I shall like as much as I should have done this one." "He would have made you an earnest lover, certainly, if that would have won you, with perhaps a dash of impetuosity and tyranny in his love; but that is what you women like, is it not?" "How can I tell?" I said, very demurely. "I forgot," he answered, laughing, "I forgot that you were just out of school, and could not be supposed to know anything about love and lovers." "Of course not," I said, putting my hands in the pockets of my basque, and looking at the ground over my left shoulder, after the manner of a French print I had seen in Mademoiselle Céline's room. "Of course not." Mr. Rutledge seemed to take in such good part my saucy ways, that I began, to feel much more at my ease, and laughed quite like myself, when on going to the table we found the soup very unattractively cold; "glacée," Mr. Rutledge said it was. "While people moralize they are very apt to forget the realities; and so we have let the soup get cold, and the dinner get burned, very likely, and shall have to wait for it as it has been waiting for us." Mr. Rutledge rang, and a servant and hot soup promptly appeared, and dinner was soon in progress, and a very pleasant dinner it proved. For the time, my companion forgot abstraction, and I forgot timidity, and both forgot the dismal storm without. Mr. Rutledge condescended to be entertaining, and I deigned to forget all former slights, and be entertained. Unluckily, however, at dessert, I made some allusion to the loneliness in which he usually took his meals, and that seemed to raise some disagreeable recollection, for his face darkened, and he said, after a short pause: "Yes, young lady, it is long since I have seen any face, and most of all, a woman's face, opposite me at this solitary table." Then he fell into a fit of musing that made me feel uncomfortably sorry for my mal-à-propos speech. I could not help wondering who had last sat where I did, and the thought was anything but genial; my eyes wandered involuntarily to the empty panel; and it was with a feeling of relief that I arose from the table and followed my host toward the library. As we passed the crayon picture, however, I paused a moment, and Mr. Rutledge, turning, said: "You're not tired of it yet?" I said no, I liked it better all the time, and to-morrow I meant to bring my drawing materials down and make a copy of it, if he was willing. "You are welcome to the picture itself, if you'll accept it," he said, indifferently, proceeding to unhook it from the frame of the picture above, to which it hung. I was mute with amazement for a moment, and hardly found breath to exclaim: "How strange that you do not value it!" He replied that there were two or three sketches of the same face about the house, and he did not care particularly for this one. It gave him great pleasure to give it to me, if I fancied it.