"Do they? Very polite of them. Well?"
"Well, being irresistible, why can't you make love to Fanny Summers, talk her into a desperate attachment to you, and then treat her as she has treated me—jilt her?"
Paul Warden opened his large, dreamy eyes to their widest, and fixed them on his excited young friend.
"Do you mean it, Tom?"
"Never meant anything more in my life, Paul."
"But supposing I could do it; supposing I am the irresistible conqueror you gallantly make me out; supposing I could talk the charming Fanny into that deplorable attachment—it seems a shame, doesn't it?"
"A shame!" exclaimed poor Tom, smarting under a sense of his own recent wrong; "and what do you call her conduct to me? It's a poor rule that won't work both ways. Let her have it herself, hot and strong, and see how she likes it—she's earned it richly. You can do it, I know, Paul; you have a way with you among women. I don't understand it myself, but I see it takes. You can do it, and you're no friend of mine, Warden, if you don't."
"Do it! My dear fellow, what wouldn't I do to oblige you; break fifty hearts, if you asked me. Here's my hand—it's a go."
"And you'll flirt with her, and jilt her?"
"With the help of the gods. Let the campaign begin at once, let me see my fair, future victim to-night."