one thinks
of the inanimate parcel one is cording with what one knows is good,
stout string.

In his eyes it was distinctly dishonourable for a man to engage a
girl to himself without a reasonably near prospect of marriage.

It was also decidedly ungentlemanly to propose to a girl if she had
money and you had none. Moreover, it was extremely selfish to
remove a girl from a comfortable position to a poorer one, though
she might positively swear she preferred it; and lastly, it was
unwise for various reasons, to be too amiable to the girl, or to
give any but the dimmest clue to your own feelings.

There was no telling--your feelings might change even--when you
have to wait so long--and then it was much better, _for the girl_,
that she should not be tied to you.

To visit the girl frequently, to hang about her to the amusement of
onlookers, to keep alive her passion by look and hint and innuendo,
to excite her by advances when he was in the humour, and studiously
repulse her when she made any, to act almost as if he were her
_fiance_, and curtly resent it if she ever assumed he was more than
an ordinary friend--this line of action he saw no fault in. The
above were his views, and they were excellent, and if the girl
didn't understand them she might do the other thing.

Some weeks passed, and the man and the girl saw each other
constantly--three or four times in the week, perhaps more; and the
inward irritation grew intense, while their outward relations
remained unchanged.

There was a certain brutality that crept into the man's tones
occasionally when he addressed her, a certain savage irritability
in manner, that told the girl's keen intelligence something; some
involuntary sighs of hers as she sat near him, and an increasing
look of exhaustion on her face, that told him something. But that
was all.

There were no tender passages between them; none of the
conventional English flirting--matters were too serious, and the
nature of each too violent to permit of that. A little bitter,
more or less hostile, conversation passed between them on the
most trifling subjects in his long afternoon calls. A little
music would be attempted--that is, he would sing song after song,
while she accompanied him, but a song was rarely completed.
Generally, before or at the middle, he would seize the music in a
gust of irrepressible and barely-veiled irritability, and fling
it on the piano--yet they attempted the music with unwave