It was a merry chase that Florence sat and watched with a dark smile on her scornful lip. In vain did the poor white doe dash along at her best speed; the great black hound was ever at her flank, and each time she turned came bounding at her throat. This idea of a chase, and a hound, and a doe took such a strong possession of Florence’s saturnine imagination, that she actually made a drawing of it, for she was a clever artist, and not without training, throwing, by a few strokes of her pencil, a perfect likeness of Mr. Plowden into the fierce features of the hound. The doe she drew with Eva’s dark eyes, and when she had done them there was such agony in their tortured gaze that she could not bear to look at them, and tore her picture up.
One day Florence came in, and found her sister weeping.
“Well, Eva, what is it now?” she asked, contemptuously.
“Mr. Plowden,” sobbed Eva.
“Oh, Mr. Plowden again! Well, my dear, if you will be so beautiful, and encourage men, you must take the consequences.”
“I never encouraged Mr. Plowden.”
“Nonsense, Eva! you will not get me to believe that. If you did not encourage him, he would not go on making love to you. Gentlemen are not so fond of being snubbed.”
“Mr. Plowden is not a gentleman,” exclaimed Eva.
“What makes you say that?”
“Because a gentleman would not persecute one as he does. He will not take No for an answer, and to-day he kissed my hand. I tried to get it away from him, but I could not. Oh, I hate him!”