"Well, in the first place, he's very fond of me."
"That shows good taste; but it needn't stand in the way, for you may be sure it won't last."
"But it will last, Clara, because I cannot care for him in return. My dear, if you knew what a brute I feel sometimes, when he goes away, looking so proud and unhappy, without ever saying an impatient word. Then I'm sorry for him, I own; but it's no use, and I only wish he would take up with somebody else. Don't you think you could help me? Clara, would you mind? It's uphill work, I know; but you've plenty of others, and it wouldn't tire you, as it does me!"
Miss Douglas looked so pitiful, and so much in earnest, that her friend laughed outright.
"I think I should like it very much," replied the latter, "though I've hardly room for another on the list. But if it's not to be the General, Blanche, we return to the previous question. Who is it?"
"I don't think I shall ever marry at all," answered the younger lady, with a smothered sigh. "If I were a man, I certainly wouldn't; and why wasn't I a man? Why can't we be independent? go where we like, do what we like, and for that matter, choose the people we like?"
"Then you would choose somebody?"
"I didn't say so. No, Clara; the sort of person I should fancy would be sure never to care for me. His character must be so entirely different from mine, and though they say, contrasts generally agree, black and white, after all, only make a feeble kind of grey."
"Whatever you do, dear," expostulated Mrs. Lushington, "don't go and fall in love with a boy! Of all follies on earth, that pays the worst. They are never the same two days together, and not one of them but thinks more of the horse he bought last Monday at Tattersalls, than the woman he 'spooned,' as they call it, last Saturday night at the Opera."
Miss Douglas winced.