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258 Rosalie would sometimes shew her lover's epistles to me to convince me what a kind, devoted husband he would make. She shewed me the letters of another individual too, the unfortunate Mr. Green, who had not the courage, or, as she expressed it, the "spunk" to plead his cause in person, but whom one denial would not satisfy; he must write again and again.

He would not have done so if he could have seen the grimaces his fair idol made over his moving appeals to her feelings, and heard her scornful laughter, and the opprobrious epithets she heaped upon him for his perseverance.

"Why don't you tell him, at once, that you are engaged?" I asked.

"Oh, I don't want him to know that!" replied she. "If he knew it, his sisters and everybody would know it, and then there would be an end of my—ahem—And besides, if I told him that, he would think my engagement was the only obstacle, and that I would have him if I were free, which I could not bear that any man should think, and he, of all others, the least. Besides, I don't care for his letters," she added, contemptuously; "he may