“Who knows, Theodore? A woman’s heart is to be measured by no callipers that I know of; it is subject to no scientific test; we cannot say it shall give this or that result. It may remain cold as marble to a man through years of faithful devotion, and then, in an instant, the marble may change to a volcano, and hidden fires may leap out of that seeming coldness. ‘Nil desperandum’ should be the motto of all inventors—and of all lovers.” Dorchester, and especially the old house in Cornhill, received Mr. Ramsay with open arms. Harrington was in the dejected state of a young man who has been rudely awakened from youth’s sweetest delusion. Fooled and forsaken by Juliet Baldwin, he had told himself that all women are liars, and was doing all in his power to establish his reputation as a woman-hater. In this temper of mind he was not averse from his own sex, and he welcomed his brother’s friend with unaffected cordiality, and was evidently cheered by the new life which Ramsay’s vivacity brought into the quiet atmosphere of home. The sisters were delighted to do honour to a scientific man, and were surprised, on attacking Mr. Ramsay at dinner with the ease and aplomb of _confrères_ in modern science, to discover one of two things—either that he knew nothing, or that they knew very little. They were at first inclined to the former opinion, but it gradually dawned upon them that their own much-valued learning was of a very elementary character, and that their facts were for the most part wrong. Chastened by this discovery, they allowed the conversation to drift into lighter channels, and never again tackled Mr. Ramsay either upon the broad and open subject of evolution, or the burning question of the cholera bacillus. They were even content to leave him to the enjoyment of his own views upon spontaneous generation and the movement of glaciers, instead of setting him right upon both subjects, as they had intended in the beginning of their acquaintance. “He is remarkably handsome, but horribly dogmatic,” Sophia told her brother, “and I’m afraid he belongs to the showy, shallow school which has arisen since the death of Darwin. He would hardly have dared to talk as he did at dinner during Darwin’s lifetime.” “Perhaps not, if Darwin had been omnipresent.” “Oh, there is a restraining influence in the very existence of such a man. He is a perpetual court of appeal against arrogant smatterers.” “I don’t think you can call a man who took a first class in science a smatterer, Sophy. However, I’m sorry you don’t like my friend.” “I like him well enough, but I am not imposed upon by his dogmatism.”