“’Twas a jest to bid me write such lies!”
“Lies? ’Fore gad, the mirror yonder will not call them lies!” He indicated the oblong glass set in above the mantel. “If there is lying, ’tis my eyes that lie! ’Tis only what they tell me, that my lips report.”
Keeping his left foot slightly raised from the floor, he pushed the chair a little towards her, and himself followed it, resting his weight partly on its back, while he hopped with his right foot. But Elizabeth stayed him with a gesture of much imperiousness.
“What has such rubbish to do with your confession and your plot?” she demanded.
“Can you not see?” And he now let some of his real agitation appear, that it might serve as the lover’s perturbation which it would be well to display.
“My confession is of the instant yielding of my heart to the charms of a goddess.”
In those days lovers, real or pretended, still talked of goddesses, flames, darts, and such.
“Who desired your heart to yield to anything?” was Miss Elizabeth’s sharply spoken reply.
“Beauty commanded it, madam!” said he, bowing low over his chair-back.