on't joke. I assure you I am thoroughly in earnest."

"She certainly has forgotten you."

She knows that for him to be convinced of this is the surest way to
revive a died-out passion.

"Who knows? She would be indifferent in that case, and polite: as it is,
she is cold, even rude."

"That may be resentment."

"Resentment means remembrance."

"Oh, not always."

"Then she has a number of my letters."

"So you said; you cannot be so very sure she has kept them. Other people
may have written her the same sort of letters, or more admirable letters
still: how can you tell?"

He colors angrily. "She is not a _femme legere_."

"She is receiving a great deal of attention now from Lord Brandolin, and
she does not seem to dislike it. They say he writes exquisite letters to
women he is fond of; I don't know myself, because I have never had
anything more interesting from him than notes about dinners or visits;
but they say so. They even say that his deserted ladies forgive his
desertions because he writes his farewells so divinely."

"Lord Brandolin's epistolary accomplishments do not interest me in the
least. Everybody knows what he is with women." He pauses a moment, then
adds, with some hesitation,--

"Dear Dorothy, you know her very well. Don't you think you could find
out for me, and tell me----"

"What?"

"Well, what she thinks or does not think; in a word, how I stand with
her."

"No,--oh, no, my dear Alan; I couldn't attempt anything of that
sort,--in my own house, too: it would seem so horribly rude. Besides, I
am not in the least--not the very least--intimate with her. I think her
charming, we are _bonnes connaiassances_, the children adore her; but I
have never said anything intimate to her in my life,--never."

"But you have so much tact."

"The more tact I have, the less likely shall I be to recall to her what
she is evidently perfectly determined to ignore. You can do it yourself
if you want it done. You are not usually shy."

Gervase gets up impatiently, and walks about in the narrow limits of the
boudoir, to the peril of the Sevres and Saxe.

"But women have a hundred indirect ways of finding out everything: you
might discover perfectly well, if you chose, whether--whether she feels
anger or any other sentiment; whether--whether, in a word, it would be
prudent to recall the past to her."

Lady Usk shakes her head with energy, stirring all its pretty blonde
curls, real and false. "_Entre l'