Until now I had thought that my benevolent host had here been my greatest friend; but there was another for whom, to my infinite surprise, I found that I felt far more intensely. Yet it was odd that, in her presence, I was apparently cold and inattentive, and thus, perhaps, it might have ever been, had she not unguardedly attracted my attention by what she meant for a severe rebuke. I happened to be walking with her and a gentleman whose wife had lately experienced, on some occasion, a narrow escape of her life; "and so Miss Bassett I had nearly become a gentleman free of incumbrance, and then I should have come and proposed to you."
"But then I should have tried to thwart you, for the mere sake of opposition," was my rather too free and easy reply.
"Oh, Mr. Graham," she answered, "you might have set your mind quite at rest on the subject, for I should have preferred Mr. Goodriche a thousand times before you."
"For what possible reason, Miss Bassett?" I asked, in sober earnest.
"Because I could have led a quiet, happy life with him—now perhaps I might have liked you, and then you would have immediately behaved like a wretch, and broken my heart."
FOOTNOTES:
[1] One who kills game exclusively to lessen his butcher's bill.