All this, like much else in life, was ridiculous enough; but because we are ridiculous, it does not follow that we do not suffer, and Frank suffered. He was five-and-twenty, and light love had him fairly by the throat; he winced, and he cried out, but very soon his dignity gave way, and he craved forgiveness. But Maggie passed without heeding him. For more than a week she resisted all his appeals, and it was not until she saw that she was taking the neighbourhood into her confidence, and to feel that if she did not relent a little he might leave Southwick, and not return, she answered him with a monosyllable. With what bliss did he hear that first “no,” and how passionately he pleaded for a few words; it did not seem to matter what they were, so long as he heard her speak one whole sentence to him. Feeling her power, she was shy of yielding, and with every concession she drew him further into the meshes of love. He dined now nearly every day at the Manor House, and he spent an hour, sometimes two, with her in the morning or afternoon; he followed her from greenhouse to greenhouse, but all his efforts were in vain, and he failed not only to obtain her promise to marry him, but even a renewal of the feeble and partial hopes which she had given him that night on the beach. He prayed, he wept, he implored pity, he openly spoke of suicide, and he hinted at murder. But Maggie passed him, pushing him out of the way with the watering-pot, threatening to water him too, until one day he drew a revolver. She screamed, and the revolver was put away, but on the next occasion a stiletto that he had brought from Italy was produced, and with a great deal of earnestness life was declared to be a miserable thing. It was absurd, no doubt, but at the same time it was not a little pathetic; he was so good-looking, and so sincere. Maggie put down the watering-pot, and she would probably have allowed him to take her hand and kiss her, if he had not spoken roughly about Charlie, and called her conduct into question. So she told him she would not speak to him again, and she continued watering the flowers in silence. Amid vague remembrances of murders she had read of, Frank's words and behaviour remained present in her mind, and that evening when Willy, who rarely took the trouble to speak, much less to advise his sisters, told her that she might never get such a chance again, she said: “I am not going to marry a madman to please your vanity.” “Marry a madman! What do you mean?” “Well, I call a man that who comes regularly to see a girl with a revolver in one pocket and a stiletto in the other, and threatens to leave himself wallowing in a pool of blood at her feet--” “You mean to say he does that? You are clearly determined to drive the poor fellow out of his mind with your infernal coquetry. Well, women are the most troublesome, and I believe in many cases, the wickedest creatures on the face of God's earth.”