hip.

H. And can you return them?

S. Yes.

H. And nothing more?

S. No, Sir.

H. You are an angel, and I will spend my life, if you will let me, in
paying you the homage that my heart feels towards you.

THE QUARREL

H. You are angry with me?

S. Have I not reason?

H. I hope you have; for I would give the world to believe my suspicions
unjust. But, oh! my God! after what I have thought of you and felt
towards you, as little less than an angel, to have but a doubt cross my
mind for an instant that you were what I dare not name--a common
lodging-house decoy, a kissing convenience, that your lips were as
common as the stairs--

S. Let me go, Sir!

H. Nay--prove to me that you are not so, and I will fall down and
worship you. You were the only creature that ever seemed to love me;
and to have my hopes, and all my fondness for you, thus turned to a
mockery--it is too much! Tell me why you have deceived me, and singled
me out as your victim?

S. I never have, Sir. I always said I could not love.

H. There is a difference between love and making me a laughing-stock.
Yet what else could be the meaning of your little sister's running out
to you, and saying "He thought I did not see him!" when I had followed
you into the other room? Is it a joke upon me that I make free with
you? Or is not the joke against HER sister, unless you make my
courtship of you a jest to the whole house? Indeed I do not well see
how you can come and stay with me as you do, by the hour together, and
day after day, as openly as you do, unless you give it some such turn
with your family. Or do you deceive them as well as me?

S. I deceive no one, Sir. But my sister Betsey was always watching and
listening when Mr. M---- was courting my eldest sister, till he was
obliged to complain of it.

H. That I can understand, but not the other. You may remember, when
your servant Maria looked in and found you sitting in my lap one day,
and I was afraid she might tell your mother, you said "You did not care,
for you had no secrets from your mother." This seemed to me odd at the
time, but I thought no more of it, till other things brought it to my
mind. Am I to suppose, then, that you are acting a part, a vile part,
all this time, and that you come up here, and stay as long as I like,
that you sit on my knee and put your arms round my neck, and feed me
with kisses, and let me take other liberties with you, and tha