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224 and diminish your chance of success with any other gentleman you, or your mamma might design to entangle.'

"What do you mean, sir?" said I, ready to stamp with passion.

"'I mean that this affair from beginning to end appears to me like a case of arrant—flirtation, to say the least of it—such a case as you would find it rather inconvenient to have blazoned through the world—especially, with the additions and exaggerations of your female rivals, who would be too glad to publish the matter, if I only gave them a handle to it. But I promise you, on the faith of a gentleman, that no word or syllable that could tend to your prejudice shall ever escape my lips, provided you will—'

"Well, well, I won't mention it," said I, "You may rely upon my silence, if that can afford you any consolation."

"'You promise it?'

"Yes," I answered, "for I wanted to get rid of him now."

"'Farewell,then!" said he, in a most doleful heart-sick tone; and with a look where pride vainly struggled against despair, he turned and went away, longing, no doubt, to get home, that he might shut himself up in his study and