"Ah, then that's bad indeed," said the Irishman, with a sigh; "if there'd been any one else, I might have hoped--" Mr. O'Boyneville's habit of subduing the stolidity of a jury by a happy colloquialism, when all grandiloquence of language had failed to produce an effect, very nearly betrayed him into saying, "to punch his head." He pulled himself up with an effort, and concluded, "I might have hoped to prove myself the worthier man of the two. But if there is no one, Lady Cecil, and you say the answer is irrevocable, my doom is sealed. I will not tell you that I shall die broken-hearted; for in this bustling nineteenth century men have no time to break their hearts in the old-fashioned way. They can only overwork their brains and die of some commonplace heart-disease. The effect of your rejection will be that I shall work, if any thing, harder than I have been accustomed to work, and go down to my grave a single man. And now I'll not bore you any longer, Lady Cecil, and I hope you'll forget that I've talked about any thing that isn't appropriate conversation for an ordinary morning call." He held out his hand as frankly as if he had shaken off all sense of mortification or disappointment. Lady Cecil had received her due share of matrimonial proposals, and had been accustomed to see a rejected swain depart with an air of dignified sulkiness. There seemed to be something almost magnanimous in the Irishman's simple heartiness of manner. It appeared as if he were rather anxious to relieve Cecil from any natural embarrassment, than oppressed by a sense of his own humiliation. She shook hands with him very cordially, and thought better of him in this moment of parting than she had thought yet. But she did not make him any conventional speech about her desire to retain his friendship, or her anxiety respecting his ultimate happiness. She fancied that his sudden passion was only the folly of an overgrown schoolboy, and she had little fear of the consequences of her rejection. "I dare say he falls in love with some one every week of his life, and passes his existence in making offers that are refused," she thought, as she sat down to the piano after he had left her. But even after thinking thus of her departed admirer, Cecil could not altogether dismiss him from her mind. She might smile at the remembrance of his folly, but she could not question his sincerity. For the moment, at least, he had been in earnest. But then it is the nature of an Irishman to be desperately in earnest about trifles. The arrival of a bloom-coloured coat from Mr. Filby the tailor seems as great an event to Goldsmith as the grant of a pension can appear to the calmer mind of Johnson.