Mr. Dolby closed the photograph-book, replaced it on the table, and looked up at her. There was no elation nor delight in his countenance as he said: 'Are you alluding to the engagement?' 'Of course I am. What else do you suppose I was talking about?' 'I did not presume to guess. You are extravagantly delighted or inconceivably distressed, in the wildest spirits or in the depths of despair, so frequently, for causes which my incomplete male understanding is incapable of discerning, that I did not know whether it might be a question of a new trimming, or an exchange of dogs between you and Miss Campbell, which had produced that very becoming animation to which you have not treated me lately.' 'O,' said Miss Montressor, 'you are out of temper. You were yesterday, you know, and you have not got over it. How I hate men who keep up spite! I have a great mind not to tell you anything that has occurred to-day.' 'I should be aghast at the threat if I did not know by experience that you are what you call "dying to tell me;" whereas I am quite willing to hear, and I can therefore wait,' said Mr. Dolby. All this was rather trying, and calculated to damp the high spirits with which Miss Montressor had returned; but she was accustomed to the acerbity of Mr. Dolby's humour, and she made light of it. 'What an unpleasant man he would be as a husband!' she often thought in her odd frank way. 'I would not be his wife for any consideration; he would bully any one he could not get away from awfully.' This familiar reflection passed through her mind on the present occasion; but it did not impair the cheerfulness of her countenance, or the glee in her voice, as she proceeded in a rather chattering style to repeat to Mr. Dolby the particulars of her interview with Bryan Duval, and to dilate upon the thorough appreciation of her gifts and powers which that prince of dramatists, actors, and good fellows had displayed. 'So encouraging,' she said, 'and so delightful, to find a person really above the jealousy which had hitherto led to her being so unjustly treated.' After all, the faculty for discovering and utilising the powers of others to hit the public taste was the great secret of the great actor.