He prest nearer and took her hand. She twitcht it sharply away. Certainly there was neither blushing nor hesitating on the lady’s part whatever he might choose to call it. “I put these questions that they might strip your protestations of glitter and show them as they are. What you offer me is contempt and shame and the laughter of men and the mocking of women, and to be flung to another or to the gutter when you weary of me. I am a simple girl, my Lord, but honest, and I refuse your offers now and hereafter. And if you answered to my test and offered me your name as well as what you are pleased to call your heart, I would refuse and despise it as I do yourself.” She flung from him magnificent, and he heard the door shut and the key turn behind her. Deadly pale and dangerous my Lord stood there. That he did not believe her assertion was nothing, for he was convinced that the ring was all she asked. For an instant he hated her, who had thus humbled him, and then again the tide of longing rolled back upon his seared heart, with the passion for revenge, the longing that in turn he might humble her and see her yet entirely at his feet and in vain. ’Twas so mingled with the sensual passion that he could not as yet tear them apart in his distracted mind. And as he stood there, outwardly calm and composed in appearance, a very great nobleman, Mrs. Bishop came tripping up, her vast hoop swinging, on her way to her dressing-room. “What, my Lord, waiting for Polly? Has she not past this way?” There was a sneer under the lightness. The woman could recall when he had waited there for her and not in vain. “I have not seen her, Miss Lucy!” says he, calling her familiarly by her stage name. “Nor did I so desire. I waited here to tell the seductive Lucy Lockit that I have not seen nor could imagine a part better played than that of the forlorn mistress of Macheath.” Even such as my Lord Baltimore may fail in tact sometimes. A sullen fire lit in the lady’s fine eyes. “Why, my Lord, I have had such practice in the past of the deserted one—’twas yourself taught me you know, that ’tis no wonder I should succeed. There are Macheaths at Court as well as in Newgate though their booty is hearts not purses.” “Amoret—Amoret!” says he shaking his finger at her and laughing— “When the summer is past ’tis past and the flowers drop. But you’ll own you were happy while it lasted, and is that nothing to be grateful for? I made you happy—you owned it a thousand times. Would you now repay me with anger?” “Not you—not you!” she cried with a sudden fierce tenderness— “’Tis that partial little devil I loathe, that wins all hearts, that has stole yours from me.” “My dear, it left you long since. Don’t the swallows fly away with the summer? My heart has wings. I never pretended otherwise to my Amoret.”