"Be not afraid," he would say, "on my behalf. The card-tables are more pleasant than the air under the trees, and I think the players are better company than your priggish popinjays. As for my habits, fair Kitty, pattern of virtue, they have become virtuous. I am never drunk--well, not often--and you have brought me luck. I have won five hundred guineas from a nabob. Think of the joy, when he pays me, of losing it all again!" CHAPTER XII. HOW HARRY TEMPLE PROVED HIS VALOUR. Thus were poet and baronet reduced to submission. The third suitor was harder to manage, because he turned sulky. Sportsmen have said that a fish, or a bird, or a fox, when he sulks, is then most difficult to secure. Thus, to be captured or cajoled, the victim must be in a good temper. Now Harry Temple went in gloomy indignation, as was visible to all eyes. He walked alone upon the Terrace, or sat alone in the Assembly Room, a Killjoy to behold. That would not have mattered, because no girl feels much sorrow for a man who foolishly sulks because he cannot marry her; but everybody knew, or thought they knew, the cause of his heavy looks. Peggy Baker said I had thrown him over for the sake of a lord, who, she added kindly, would certainly throw me over in turn. Some of the company cried shame on the flinty-hearted woman who could let so pretty a fellow go love-sick. "Kitty," his melancholy seemed to say, "you left us a simple country girl: you would have been proud of my addresses had you understood my meaning"--this was quite true: "you are now a woman of fashion, and you have ambition: your head is turned with flattery: you aspire to nothing short of a coronet. In those days you were satisfied with the approval of your looking-glass and your conscience: now you would draw all men to your heels, and are not happy unless you make them all miserable." But that was not true at all; I did not wish to make men miserable; and it was nothing to me whether they were miserable or happy. I thought of one man only, as is natural to a woman in love. "If," I said to him one day, being tired by such exhibition of temper, "if you do not like the place, why make yourself unhappy by staying here? Cambridge, methinks, would be a more fitting abode for you, where there are books and scholars; not a watering-place, where people come together to amuse themselves and be merry." "I shall stay here," he replied, "until I find there is no hope for me." "Oh, silly Harry!" I said; "is there no other woman in the world who will make you happy, except poor Kitty Pleydell?" "No--none," he shook his melancholy wig, the tie at the back of his head wagging sorrowfully.