If Mr. Plowden wanted a straightforward answer, he had certainly got it. For some moments he sat in sulky silence, and then he said: “I suppose, if that is the case, there is nothing to be done.” “I never said that. Women are frequently married whose affections are very much engaged elsewhere. You know how they win their wives in savage countries, Mr. Plowden: they catch them. Marriage by capture is one of the oldest institutions in the world.” “Well!” “Well, the same institution still obtains in England, only we don’t call it by that name. Do you suppose that no women are hunted down nowadays? Ah, very many are; the would-be husband heads the pack, and all the loving relatives swell its cry.” “You mean that your sister can be hunted down,” he said, bluntly. “I! I mean nothing, except that the persistent suitor on the spot often has a better chance than the lover at a distance, however dear he may be.” Then Mr. Plowden took his leave. Florence watched him walking down the garden-path. “I am glad Jeremy shook you soundly,” she said, aloud. “Poor Eva!” CHAPTER VI. MR. PLOWDEN GOES A-WOOING Mr. Plowden was not a suitor to let the grass grow under his feet. As he once took the trouble to explain to Florence, he considered that there was nothing like boldness in wooing, and he acted up to his convictions. Possessing no more delicacy of feeling than a bull-elephant, and as much consideration for the lady as the elephant has for the lily it tramples underfoot, he, figuratively speaking, charged at Eva every time he saw her. He laid wait for her round corners, and asked her to marry him; he dropped in on her at odd hours, and insisted upon her marrying him. It was quite useless for her to say, “No, no, no,” or to appeal to his better feelings or compassion, for he had none. He simply would not listen to her; but encouraged thereto by the moral support which he received from Florence, he crushed the poor girl with his amorous eloquence. It was a merry chase that Florence sat and watched with a dark smile on her scornful lip. In vain did the poor white doe dash along at her best speed; the great black hound was ever at her flank, and each time she turned came bounding at her throat. This idea of a chase, and a hound, and a doe took such a strong possession of Florence’s saturnine imagination, that she actually made a drawing of it, for she was a clever artist, and not without training, throwing, by a few strokes of her pencil, a perfect likeness of Mr. Plowden into the fierce features of the hound. The doe she drew with Eva’s dark eyes, and when she had done them there was such agony in their tortured gaze that she could not bear to look at them, and tore her picture up. One day Florence came in, and found her sister weeping. “Well, Eva, what is it now?” she asked, contemptuously. “Mr. Plowden,” sobbed Eva. “Oh, Mr. Plowden again! Well, my dear, if you will be so beautiful, and encourage men, you must take the consequences.”