"Remember your promise then," added Fred Lamb, "and do pray, dearest Harry, tell me, when you will throw away two whole days on me in the country."
"What shall we do there?"
"Get married," interposed Julia.
"Married!" exclaimed Fred Lamb. "From my heart and soul, I shall pity the man who ever hopes to attach you, Harriette, to himself. You have the knack of torturing those who love you, beyond the possibility of endurance! Why not have told me at once that you did not mean to receive me?"
"I meant well," answered I, sighing; for it never gave me any pleasure to be loved by those whose love I could not return.
"Had you been my wife, by heavens, I should have murdered you long ago," said Fred Lamb, half seriously.
"Why, yes," I replied, "I think, as yet, you had better not venture on me; but really, Fred, on the day I turn fifty I propose being steady, and then, perhaps——"
"No," said Fred Lamb, "not a bit of it. You would only then, as now, be one day grateful for attentions and the next confess that you were sorry, advise one not to fret for a woman of fifty; but declare you had changed your mind."
"If this is really my character, and you imagine I should act thus for ever towards every man, how can you be so very weak as to like me?"
Lord Molyneux came into my box at this instant. I always made it a point to make violent love to Lord Molyneux, for the same reason that I used to say soft things to Luttrell: because they neither of them professed the least love to me.