"Till morning, if I wish. Don't bother me."
"After coming so near having your neck broken, you ought to be in a better frame of mind."
"So had you. Neither breaking my neck nor coming near it will convert me."
"Well, I hope you will get through your moods and tenses to-day.
You have had more than I ever remember within so short a time."
With this comforting statement Bel left her friend to herself, who sat staring into the fire in the most discontented manner.
"'Capable of the noblest things,' indeed," she thought. "I would like to know who is capable of meaner things. And now what do you intend to do, Lottie Marsden? Going on with your foolish, childish jest, after the fun has all faded out of it? If you do, you will make a fool of yourself instead of him. He is not the man you thought he was, at all. He is your superior in every respect, save merely in the ease which comes from living in public instead of seclusion, and in all his diffidence there has been nothing so rude and ill-bred as Julian's treatment of Mrs. Dlimm. Julian indeed! He's but a well-dressed little manikin beside this large-minded man"; and she scowled more darkly than ever at the fire.
"But what shall I do? I can't be such a Christian as Bel is. I would rather not be one at all. What's more, I cannot bring my mind to decide to be such a Christian as Mr. Hemstead is. I should have to change completely, and give up my old self-pleasing and wayward life, and that seems like giving up life itself. Religion is a bitter medicine that I must take some time or other. But the idea of sobering down at my time of life!"
"But you may not live to see age, Think what a risk you ran to-night," urged conscience.
"Well, I must take my chances. A plague on that Hemstead! I can't be with him ten minutes but he makes me uncomfortable in doing wrong. All was going smoothly till he came, and life was one long frolic. Now he has got my conscience all stirred up so that between them both I shall have little comfort. I won't go with him to Mrs. Dlimm's to-morrow. He will talk religion to me all the time, and I, like a big baby, shall cry, and he will think I am on the eve of conversion, and perhaps will offer to take me out among the border ruffians as an inducement. If I want to live my old life, and have a good time, the less I see of Frank Hemstead the better, for, somehow or other, when I am with him I can't help seeing that he is right, and feeling mean in my wrong. I will just carry out my old resolution, and act as badly as I can. He will then see what I am, and let me alone."
Having formed this resolution, Lottie slept as sweetly as innocence itself.