After a considerable pause, I said —­ “And Miss Oliver?  Are her disappointment and sorrow of no interest to you?”

“Miss Oliver is ever surrounded by suitors and flatterers:  in less than a month, my image will be effaced from her heart.  She will forget me; and will marry, probably, some one who will make her far happier than I should do.”

“You speak coolly enough; but you suffer in the conflict.  You are wasting away.”

“No.  If I get a little thin, it is with anxiety about my prospects, yet unsettled —­ my departure, continually procrastinated.  Only this morning, I received intelligence that the successor, whose arrival I have been so long expecting, cannot be ready to replace me for three months to come yet; and perhaps the three months may extend to six.”

“You tremble and become flushed whenever Miss Oliver enters the schoolroom.”

Again the surprised expression crossed his face.  He had not imagined that a woman would dare to speak so to a man.  For me, I felt at home in this sort of discourse.  I could never rest in communication with strong, discreet, and refined minds, whether male or female, till I had passed the outworks of conventional reserve, and crossed the threshold of confidence, and won a place by their heart’s very hearthstone.

“You are original,” said he, “and not timid.  There is something brave in your spirit, as well as penetrating in your eye; but allow me to assure you that you partially misinterpret my emotions.  You think them more profound and potent than they are.  You give me a larger allowance of sympathy than I have a just claim to.  When I colour, and when I shade before Miss Oliver, I do not pity myself.  I scorn the weakness.  I know it is ignoble:  a mere fever of the flesh:  not, I declare, the convulsion of the soul.  That is just as fixed as a rock, firm set in the depths of a restless sea.  Know me to be what I am —­ a cold hard man.”

I smiled incredulously.

“You have taken my confidence by storm,” he continued, “and now it is much at your service.  I am simply, in my original state —­ stripped of that blood-bleached robe with which Christianity covers human deformity —­ a cold, hard, ambitious man.  Natural affection only, of all the sentiments, has permanent power over me.  Reason, and not feeling, is my guide; my ambition is unlimited:  my desire to rise higher, to do more than others, insatiable.  I honour endurance, perseverance, industry, talent; because these are the means by which men achieve great ends and mount to lofty eminence.  I watch your career with interest, because I consider you a specimen of a diligent, orderly, energetic woman:  not because I deeply compassionate what you have gone through, or what you still suffer.”

“You would describe yourself as a mere pagan philosopher,” I said.