"Now, Conway, all that is thoroughly unfair. The would-be author talks of his would-be book to everybody. I have never talked of Miss Dale to any one but you, and one or two very old family friends. And from year to year, and from month to month, I have done all that has been in my power to win her. I don't think I shall ever succeed, and yet I am as determined about it as I was when I first began it,—or rather much more so. If I do not marry Lily, I shall never marry at all, and if anybody were to tell me to-morrow that she had made up her mind to have me, I should well nigh go mad for joy. But I am not going to give up all my life for love. Indeed the less I can bring myself to give up for it, the better I shall think of myself. Now I'll go away and call on old lady Demolines."
"And flirt with her daughter."
"Yes;—flirt with her daughter, if I get the opportunity. Why shouldn't I flirt with her daughter?"
"Why not, if you like it?"
"I don't like it,—not particularly, that is; because the young lady is not very pretty, nor yet very graceful, nor yet very wise."
"She is pretty after a fashion," said the artist, "and if not wise, she is at any rate clever."
"Nevertheless, I do not like her," said John Eames.
"Then why do you go there?"
"One has to be civil to people though they are neither pretty nor wise. I don't mean to insinuate that Miss Demolines is particularly bad, or indeed that she is worse than young ladies in general. I only abused her because there was an insinuation in what you said, that I was going to amuse myself with Miss Demolines in the absence of Miss Dale. The one thing has nothing to do with the other thing. Nothing that I shall say to Miss Demolines will at all militate against my loyalty to Lily."
"All right, old fellow;—I didn't mean to put you on your purgation. I want you to look at that sketch. Do you know for whom it is intended?" Johnny took up a scrap of paper, and having scrutinized it for a minute or two declared that he had not the slightest idea who was represented. "You know the subject,—the story that is intended to be told?" said Dalrymple.