And Miss Sallianna raised her eyes, bashfully, to Verty’s face, then cast them with maidenly modesty upon the carpet.

“No, ma’am,” said Verty, thoughtfully, and quite ignorant of the deadly attack designed by the fair lady upon his heart—­“I don’t think I could change.”

In these simple words the honest Verty answered all.

“Why not?” simpered the lady.

“Because I don’t think Redbud is in love with anybody else,” he said; “I know she is not!”

“Why, then, has she treated you so badly?” said Miss Sallianna, gradually forgetting her bashfulness, and reassuming her languishing air and manner—­“there must be some laborious circumstance, Mr. Verty.”

Verty pressed his head with his hand, and was silent.  All at once a brighter light illumined the fair lady’s face, and she addressed herself to speak, first uttering a modest cough—­

“Suppose I suggest a plan of finding out, sir,” she said; “we might find easily.”

“Oh, ma’am! how?”

“Will you follow my advice?”

“Yes, ma’am—­of course.  I mean if it’s right.  Excuse me, I did not mean—­what was your advice, ma’am?” stammered Verty.

The lady smiled, and did not seem at all offended at Verty’s qualification.

“It may appear singular to you at first,” Miss Sallianna said; “but my advice is, that you appear to make love—­to pay attentions to—­somebody else for a short time.”

“Attentions, ma’am?”

“Seem to like some other lady better than Redbud.”

“Oh, but that would not be right.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t.”

Miss Sallianna smiled.

“I don’t want you to change at all, Mr. Verty,” she said; “only to take this modus addendi, which is the Greek for way,—­to take this way to find out.  I would not advise it, of course, if it was wrong, and it is the best thing you could do, indeed.”

Verty strongly combated this plan, but was met at every turn, by Miss Sallianna, with ready logic; and the result, as is almost always the case when men have the temerity to argue with ladies, was a total defeat.  Verty was convinced, or talked obtuse upon the subject, and with many misgivings, acquiesced in Miss Sallianna’s plan.

That lady then went on in a sly and careful manner—­possibly diplomatic would be the polite word—­to suggest herself as the most proper object of Verty’s experiment.  He might make love to her if he wished—­she would not be offended.  He might even kiss her hand, and kneel to her, and perform any other gallant ceremony he fancied—­she would make allowances, and not become angry if he even proceeded so far as to write her billet-doux, and ask her hand in a matrimonial point of view.  Miss Sallianna wound up by saying, that it would be an affair of rare and opprobrious interest; and, as a comedy, would be positively deleterious, which was probably a lapsus linguae for “delicious.”