"I don't think," said Tom Sedley, at last, abruptly, "that nice, pretty little creature, Agnes Etherage--the nicest little thing, by Jove, I think I ever saw--I say she is not looking well." "Is not she really?" said Cleve, very coolly cutting open a leaf in his magazine. "Didn't you observe?" exclaimed Tom, rather fiercely. "Well, no, I can't say I did; but you know them so much better than I," answered Cleve; "it can't be very much; I dare say she's well by this time." "How _can_ you speak that way, Verney, knowing all you do?" "Why, _what_ do I know?" exclaimed Cleve, looking up in unaffected wonder. "You know all about it--_why_ she's out of spirits, _why_ she's looking so delicate, _why_ she's not like herself," said Tom, impatiently. "Upon my soul I do _not_," said Cleve Verney, with animation. "That's odd, considering you've half broken her heart," urged Tom. "I broken her heart?" repeated Cleve. "Now, really, Sedley, do pray think what you're saying." "I say I think you've broken her heart, and her sister thinks so too; and it's an awful shame," insisted Tom, very grimly. "I really do think the people want to set me mad," said Cleve, testily. "If anyone says that I have ever done anything that could have made any of that family, who are in their senses, fancy that I was in love with Miss Agnes Etherage, and that I wished her to suppose so, it is simply an _untruth_. I never did, and I don't intend; and I can't see, for the life of me, Tom Sedley, what business it is of yours. But thus much I do say, upon my honour, it is a lie. Miss Charity Etherage, an old maid, with no more sense than a snipe, living in that barbarous desert, where if a man appears at all, during eight months out of the twelve, he's a prodigy, and if he walks up the street with a Cardyllian lady, he's pronounced to be over head and ears in love, and of course meditating marriage--I say she's not the most reliable critic in the world in an affair of that sort; and all I say is, that I've given _no_ grounds for any such idea, and I mean it, upon my honour; and I've seldom been so astonished in my life before." There was an air of frank and indignant repudiation in Cleve's manner and countenance, which more even than his words convinced Tom Sedley, who certainly was aware how little the Cardyllian people knew of the world, and what an eminently simple maiden in all such matters the homely Miss Charity was. So Tom extended his hand and said-- "Well, Cleve, I'm so glad, and I beg your pardon, and I know you say truth, and pray shake hands; but though you are not to blame--I'm now quite _sure_ you're not--the poor girl is very unhappy, and her sister very angry."