"Why, alas! should I do so—why pain her by confessing to her my unhappy attachment, which I know it is hopeless to expect her to return."
"I'll be hanged," said Frank, "if I think you know any thing at all about the matter."
"Not know, indeed! How, alas! could any one suppose that an angelic creature like her could love me?"
"Not many, I grant; but then, as old Captain Growler used to say—never be astonished at any thing a woman does in that way—
'Pan may win where Phœbus woos in vain.'
And so the lovely Miss Moll—I beg your pardon, Mary, I mean—may in like manner, do so differently from what any one could have suspected, as to be induced at last to listen to her Vernon's tale of love."
The lover here alluded to hardly knew whether to treat the matter as a joke or to get very angry; and so he did neither, whilst Frank went on—"I'm sure you needn't despair either, as far as looks go. There's pretty, smiling, little Bessie—in my opinion the prettiest girl of the two"—Vernon shook his head with mournful impatience—"Well, you think yours prettiest, and I'll think mine," continued Frank; "that's just as it should be; and as I was about to say, if the lovely Bessie can smile upon your humble servant when he talked of love, I don't see why her sister might not be induced to smile upon his companion if he did the like."
"How! what? Why, you surely don't mean to say that you've told Miss Bessie that you love her?"
"Yes, I do," replied Frank. "I told her so yesterday afternoon as we walked home from church, behind the rest of the party, across the fields. Thought I wouldn't do it then either, as there were so many people about—never said a word about the matter over two fields—helped her over the stiles, too, and talked—no, I be hanged if I think we said a word, either of us—till as I was helping her to jump down the third, out it bounced, all of a sudden."
"And what did you say?" asked Wycherley.