"I wish you would not ask me."
"Why?"
"Because he hates me, and I won't own to a passion malheureuse. He nearly overturned poor Mr. Farnley to-day at dinner, in trying to avoid the chair next me."
"Oh, no; it was in trying to get the one next Miss Middleton," observed Rosa Moore, with an Innocent expression of countenance.
Mrs. Ernsley continued without noticing the interruption, otherwise than by a downward movement of the corners of her mouth—"I had a thousand times rather be hated by him, than be liked in the way in which he seems to like any one, qui lui tombe sous la main."
"No doubt," said Henry; "next to being loved there is nothing like being hated."
"You think so too, then?" said Mrs. Ernsley.
"Certainly," he replied. "It gratifies one of the strongest tastes, or rather passions, of one's nature; that of feeling emotion one's self, and exciting it in others. If I could not see the woman I loved agitated by her love for me, I had rather see her tremble, shudder eyen at my presence, than look as if Mr. Manby had come into the room."
"What a detestable lover you would make!" exclaimed Mrs. Ernsley. "Always, by your own admission, on the verge of hatred."
He laughed, and said, "It is an old saying, that love and hatred are closely allied."