Having tied himself up in this conversational bow-knot, Mr. Ramsay waited to be extricated.  His idea had been to convey in the most delicate and roundabout way to Bijou that he was not the man to marry any woman for her money, and that if he had seemed to like a certain person a good deal it was not because she was the daughter of a rich man.  To her, however, he seemed to be posing as a conqueror of heiresses, indifferent to the pain he might inflict upon any girl silly enough to be captivated by his good looks and good manners,—­a breaker of tacit engagements, and a wicked worldling.  So she rose very stiffly, and said that she neither knew nor cared to know what he meant, and was obliged to leave him, and so went away, and left him extremely puzzled and disconcerted by the behavior of his charmer.

After this, the summer of Mr. Ramsay’s discontent set in.  There was nothing that he could actually complain of in Bijou’s treatment of him, but it was plain that she had changed.  She was vastly more polite than before, but much less kind.  Their intimacy seemed a thing of the past century.  It was Mr. Heathcote now who, partly from idleness, partly from a desire to tease his friend, went constantly to the Browns’, and showed Bijou various attentions, which she accepted with very pronounced satisfaction.  It was with Miss Price now that Mr. Ramsay rode and walked and talked,—­Miss Price, whose free-and-easiness, vapid chatter, artificiality, and sentimentalism contrasted unpleasantly with Bijou’s frankness and sincerity.  By this course each confirmed the other in the impression of untrustworthiness and flirtatiousness both had received, and they ought to have been perfectly satisfied with this result.  But, considering how perfectly happy she was in Mr. Heathcote’s society, it was odd that Bijou grew paler and thinner every day.  And if Miss Price was so perfectly delightful, why did she send Mr. Ramsay home always as gloomy and morose as any young man very well could be?  With blundering honesty, Mr. Ramsay once taxed Bijou with a preference for Mr. Heathcote, not knowing that when a jealous lover accuses a girl of being fond of some other man she never fails to encourage the idea, unless it is really true, when she denies it with the utmost vehemence.  Bijou, with much feminine circumlocution, insinuated that he was devotedly attached to Miss Price, to which he truthfully replied that he did not care “one rap” about her.  Women are born incredulous in such affairs.  When sure of themselves, they doubt the lover; when sure of the lover, they invariably doubt themselves.  And so the misunderstanding grew, and continued in mutual mistake and suspicion, and no two people were ever more thoroughly and foolishly miserable.  Mr. Ketchum, when enlightened by his wife, could see that his guest was in a bad way; and one day it chanced that they were left alone in the library, where Job was most unromantically engaged in looking up plans for a model pig-stye, while he incidentally refreshed himself with his favorite confection, molasses candy.