“Oh, good gracious!” cried Miss Hunsden, as soon as she was able to speak; “who ever heard the like of this?  Sir Everard Kingsland, get up.  I forgive you everything for this superhuman joke.  I haven’t had such a laugh for a month.  For goodness’ sake get up, and don’t be a goose!”

The young baronet sprung to his feet, furious with mortification and rage.

“Miss Hunsden—­”

“Oh, don’t!” cried Harriet, in a second paroxysm.  “Don’t make me rupture an artery.  Love me?—­worship me?  Why, you ridiculous thing! you haven’t known me two days altogether!”

He turned away without speaking a word.

“And then you’re engaged to Lady Louise!  Every one says so, and I am sure it looks like it.”

“I am not engaged to Lady Louise.”

He said those words huskily, and he could say no more.

Miss Hunsden tried to look grave, but her mouth twitched.  The sense of the ludicrous overcame her sense of decorum, and again she laughed until the tears stood in her eyes.

“Oh, I shall die!” in a faint whisper.  “My sides ache.  I beg your pardon, Sir Everard; but indeed I can not help it.  It is so funny!”

“So I perceive.  Good-morning, Miss Hunsden.”

“And now you are angry.  Why, Sir Everard!” catching for the first time a glimpse of his deathly white face, “I didn’t think you felt like this.  Oh!  I beg your pardon with all my heart for laughing.  I believe I should laugh on the scaffold.  It’s dreadfully vulgar, but it was born with me, I’m afraid.  Did I gallop right into your heart’s best affections at the fox-hunt?  Why, I thought I shocked you dreadfully.  I know I tried to.  Won’t you shake hands, Sir Everard, and part friends?”

“Miss Hunsden will always find me her friend if she ever needs one.  Farewell!”

Again he was turning away.  He would not touch the proffered palm.  He was so deathly white, and his voice shook so, that the hot tears rushed into the impetuous Harrie’s eyes.

“I am so sorry,” she said, with the simple humility of a little child.  “Please forgive me, Sir Everard.  I know it was horrid of me to laugh; but you don’t really care for me, you know.  You only think you do; and I—­oh!  I’m only a flighty little girl of seventeen, and I don’t love anybody in the world but papa, and I never mean to be married—­at least, not for ages to come.  Do forgive me.”

He bowed low, but he would neither answer nor take her hand.  He was far too deeply hurt.

Before she could speak again he was gone.

“And he’s as mad as a hatter!” said Harrie, ruefully.  “Oh, dear, dear! what torments men are, and what a bore falling in love is!  And I liked him, too, better than any of them, and thought we were going to be brothers in arms—­Damon and—­what’s his name?—­and all that sort of thing!  It’s of no use my ever hoping for a friend.  I shall never have one in this lower world, for just so sure as I get to like a person, that person must go and fall in love with me, and then we quarrel and part.  It’s hard.”