oth undeceive him. It would not matter if a fellow was
cheated if he never knew it, but that's where it hurts.

I shouldn't wonder if that pair of old plotters would catch me yet if I
don't take care. I will tease them a bit, any way: I'll pay a deuced lot
of attention to Eva, and keep the other fellows away. No man would try
to win her if he thought I was serious.

Blanche Furnaval _is_ an odd girl, I went on musing. They said she
would end badly--hope she won't, though. Bewitching girl, but she don't
seem to care if people admire her or not. I never can quite understand
her. Once I wrote a few verses and gave them to her--compared her to an
ice-covered stream, quiet on the surface, but all motion and tumult
below. Well, she never even thanked me for them, though she said she
liked that simile, it was so new. There was another couplet about her
name--Blanche and snow and cold: when she read it she laughed and said,
"Though my name means white, it does not mean cold. You know there are
some white things that are very warm, Mr. Highrank--my ermine muff, for
instance." But I made a clever answer. I said, "The muff _looks_
cold, and so does Miss Blanche, but if I could be so fortunate as to
touch the heart of either I might find warmth." "My muff has no heart,"
she answered, looking at me as if she did not understand. "And is its
owner in the same condition?" I asked tenderly. (I make it a rule to
speak tenderly to all girls, it is so sad for them to love me when I
cannot return it.) "In a poetical sense I believe she is," she replied,
"but for all practical purposes she has one that serves very well."

Sometimes she would be invisible for two or three days together: no one
would see her, either at meals or at the evening ball. When asked what
she had been doing, she would smile that sweet smile of hers and say she
had been enjoying herself. She was very talented, but not a bit
ostentatious. To give you an example: It was rumored that she had a
wonderful voice, and though we had been begging her to sing for at least
a month, she steadily refused to gratify us. One day there was a queer
old Italian chap came to The Brook for his health. He looked like an
organ-grinder, and had been once actually on the stage. Well, do you
know she allowed him to be introduced to her, and talked to him with as
much deference as if he had been a prince, when she ought not have
spoken to him at all, you know; and in that gibberish, too, that