“Dear Lady Barbara, I beseech you to forget me. It gives me terrible great pain to create such a flutter in your heart. But, my poor, dear lady, I would have you consider that your case is only one of many. Truly, I am not responsible for the manly graces and the upright character that have brought you to this pass. Dear lady, there have been others. And to them, tender souls! I invariably promise to be a brother; cheerfully, therefore, will I admit you to their number, for ’tis not the least sweet of my traits that to my victims I ever am humane.”
The saucy style of him spurred me so keenly that my methods grew still more vigorous. But pleading, soft speeches did but increase his insolence. Raillery he laughed at; glances amorously bold put him in a saucy humour; glances amorously tender left him cold. He shook his head at these devices.
“I like ’em clinging,” he reminded me.
I fell upon wistfulness and a pensive air. My demeanour grew as subdued and meek as anything out of heaven. Butter would not have melted in my mouth, you would have thought; nor, judging by the disposition of my countenance, could I have said “Bo!” to the arrantest goose of the male persuasion. My voice became a low, sweet song, and as melodious as the simple airs I used to play upon the virginal when I was a girl. That was before I learned to play on a more responsive instrument—Man. I mean, that lordly thing, that harpsichord which beauty and intelligence perform all tunes upon at their capricious pleasure.
Fortune had denied me neither of these requisites. Full thoroughly had I used this natural magic. My finger-tips had thrilled a hundred strings. I had played any air I pleased upon a Prime Minister, a periwigged Ambassador, a Duke with acres and the gout, a Field-Marshal with as many stars upon his chest as a frosty night could show you; and at least one Personage, who, being of the Blood, it is temerity to mention. If I acted Queen Elizabeth to these Sir Walter Raleighs—that is, if I so much as wiped my feet upon them—I made them happy for a week. And they had their rent rolls and their pedigrees! Indeed, one and all wore such quantities of gold lace on their coats that when the world heard of my depredations, it exclaimed: “Bab Gossiter is the very luckiest woman that ever flicked a fan.” Therefore, was it not a paradox that I should prefer a kinless beggar to them all, and that he, presumably, preferred any slum-slut to my Lady Barbara?
“Why, you stoic villain!” I cried out, “you seem every whit as insensible to tenderness as to the Cleopatra manner. Do you not see my mood to be as melting as the morning sun?”
“Confess now,” says he provokingly, “that you yearn to beat me with your fan?”
“Faith, that’s true,” says I.
“Then,” says he, “this tenderness of yours is but a cloak you do put on to cover up Old Termagant. Your real nature is as sweet and gentle as an earthquake. Your meekness is a mantrap in which to snare a poor wretch with a shattered knee, for you are about as tame and docile in your character as is a rude lion of Arabia. Fie, my dearest cheat, you do not catch Anthony Dare for your husband thus—that is, I mean James Grantley.”
“Yes, that is, you mean James Grantley,” says I, seizing on his error.