pirituelle_ face before him: "no, you most
certainly do not."

"Well, I thought not myself; yet each of those deluded young men saw
something angelic about me, and would insist on asking me to share his
lot. They kept themselves sternly blind to the fact that I detest with
equal vigor broth and old women."

"Intolerable presumption!" says Luttrell, parenthetically.

"Was it? I don't think I looked at it in that light. They were all very
estimable men, and Mr. Rochfort was positively handsome. You, you may
well stare, but some curates, you know, are good-looking, and he was
decidedly High Church. In fact, he wasn't half so bad as the generality
of them," says Molly, relentingly. "Only--it may be wrong, but the
truth is I hate curates. I think nothing of them. They are a mixture of
tea and small jokes, and are ever at a stand-still. They are always in
the act of budding,--they never bloom; and then they are so afraid of
the bishop."

"I thank my stars I'm not a curate," says Luttrell, devoutly.

"However,"--regretfully,--"they were _something_: a proposal is
always an excitement. But the present man is married; so that makes it
impossible for this present year. There was positively nothing to which
to look forward. So you may fancy with what rapture I hailed your
coming."

"You are very good," says Luttrell, in an uncertain tone, not being
quite sure whether he is intensely amused or outrageously angry, or
both. "Had you--any other lovers?"

"Yes. There was the last doctor. He poisoned a poor man afterward by
mistake, and had to go away."

"After what?"

"After I declined to assist him in the surgery," says Molly, demurely.
"It was a dreadful thing,--the poisoning, I mean,--and caused a great
deal of scandal. I don't believe it was anybody's fault, but I
certainly did pity the man he killed. And--it might have been me, you
know; think of that! He was very much attached to me; and so was the
Lefroys' eldest son, and James Warder, and the organist, to say nothing
of the baker's boy, who, I am convinced, would cut his throat to oblige
me to-morrow morning, if I asked him."

"Well, don't ask him," says Luttrell, imploringly. "He might do it on
the door-step, and then think of the horrid mess! Promise me you won't
even hint at it until after I am gone."

"I promise," says Molly, laughing.

Onward glides the boat; the oars rise and fall with a tuneful splash.
Miss Massereene, throwing her hat with reckless extra