Had I had nothing else to do but to read and muse I should have greatly missed Martelli. As it was, I felt his absence on the evening that followed his departure. I missed his dark face, his glowing eye, his rapid speech, his tart questions. His arm-chair looked very empty without him. My supper too was somewhat tasteless, wanting the sharp condiment of his tongue and gestures. But how should I feel his absence very sensibly with Mrs. Fraser to comfort me? I only wonder I felt it at all. Our parting had not been calculated to sharpen regret. I had no notion he was such a passionate man. There was no doubt he had been insulting. But what in the world could have provoked such an outbreak? He would have had me believe it was my resolution to marry Mrs. Fraser that angered him. But what was Mrs. Fraser to him? Was he a monomaniac--mad on the subject of women? We know that there are people born with antipathies which nothing can shake. Lady Heneage would faint at the sight of a rose; the Marquis de la Rochejacquelin would turn white with fear before a squirrel; and I have read in some author of a man whose antipathy to old women was such, that once when his friends, by way of joke, introduced an elderly female into his presence, he fell in a fit and died. I do not say that I quite believed this to be Martelli's disease: but I was strongly disposed to think that he had some eccentric aversion to living in a house where there was a mistress. I did not pass a quiet night. I had resolved to propose next day to my beautiful neighbour, and my resolution rather agitated me. A man may do in a moment of impulse what he would fear to attempt in cold blood. I was rather sorry I had not proposed that afternoon. I had been surrounded by conditions highly favourable to a declaration. It would have been over now, and I should have been able to sleep the sleep of the accepted. I had told her I would call in the morning. At another time she might have asked me in her odd sweet way "Why?" but her silence was auspicious. She had lowered her beautiful eyes, and the conscious curve of her mouth gave me reason to believe she had guessed my mission. So at about eleven o'clock, when the sun stood high and the land lay hot and still beneath its fiery gaze, I took my hat and stepped over to Elmore Cottage. There was no need of ceremony now to gain admittance. The girl knew I was a privileged visitor and admitted me with a smile.