How was it possible to have any sympathy with so rueful a lover? Why, it made one ridiculous. Everybody said that Harry Temple was in love with me, that I, for the worst of motives, viz., to catch a coronet, refused him, and that he was an excellent match, especially for one who was nothing better than a country parson's daughter. "I believe only a curate, my dear," Peggy Baker would say. "No doubt she lived on bacon fat and oatmeal, and knitted her own stockings. And yet she refuses Harry Temple, a pretty fellow, though studious, and a man whom any of us, gentlewomen born, would be glad to encourage." "Oh!" I said to him, "why do you not go? Why do you look reproaches on me?" "Because," he replied, "I still love you, unworthy as you are." "Unworthy? Mr. Temple, methinks that a little civility----" "Yes, unworthy. I say that a girl who throws over her oldest friends with the almost avowed intention of securing a title, without knowing anything of the character of the man who bears it----" "This is too much!" I said. "First, sir, let me know what there is against Lord Chudleigh's character. Tell me, upon your word, sir, do you know anything at all? Is he not a man of principle and honour?" "I know nothing against him. I dare say that he is what you think." "Well, sir; and, in the next place, how dare you accuse me of deliberately trying to attract my lord? Do you know me so well as to read my soul? Do you know me so well as to be justified to yourself when you attribute such a motive to me?" "What other motive can I attribute to you?" he asked bitterly. "Is he not a peer? Is he not rich?" "O Harry!" I cried, "you will drive me mad between you. Cannot a peer be a good man? Cannot a girl--I say--may not a girl--Harry, you force me to say it--is it not possible for a girl to fall in love with a man who is even a peer and a rich man? Go sir! you have humbled me, and made me say words of which I am ashamed. Go, if you please, and tell all the world what I have said." Then he fell to asking my forgiveness. He was, he said, wretched indeed: he had long lost my love. "Man!" I said, "you never had it!"--and now he was like to lose my friendship. This talk about friendship between a man and woman when both are young seems to me a mighty foolish thing. For if the woman is in love with some one else her friendship is, to be sure, worth just nothing at all, because she must needs be for ever thinking of the man she loves. There is but one man in all the world for her, and that man not he who would fain be her friend. Therefore she gives not a thought to him. Now if a man be in love with one woman and "in friendship" with another, I think that either his love for one must be a poor lukewarm passion, which I, for one, would not be anxious to receive, or his friendship for the other must be a chilly sort of thing.