And Eliza showed that she was powerful by doing the thing that he desired of her, in spite of the opposition from the servants which she at first experienced.  She had a share of hand work to do also, which was not light, but she had high wages, a comfortable room in the top storey, and the women who were boarding in the house made friends with her.  She would have thought herself very well off had it not been for her dislike of Harkness, for which one reason certainly was the show he made of being in love with her.

Harkness had his office on the first floor, and he took dinner at the hotel.  For about a week after Eliza’s advent the young dentist and the young housekeeper measured each other with watchful eyes, a measurement for which the fact that they crossed each other’s path several times a day gave ample opportunity.  Because the woman had the steadier eyes and the man was the more open-tempered, Eliza gained more insight into Harkness’s character than he did into hers.  While he, to use his own phrase, “couldn’t reckon her up the least mite in the world,” she perceived that under his variable and sensitive nature there was a strong grip of purpose upon all that was for his own interest in a material way; but having discovered this vein of calculating selfishness, mixed with much of the purely idle and something that was really warmhearted, she became only the more suspicious of his intentions towards herself, and summoned the whole strength of her nature to oppose him.

She said to him one day, “I’m surprised to hear that you go about telling other gentlemen that you like me.  I wonder that you’re not ashamed.”

As she had hitherto been silent, he was surprised at this attack, and at first he took it as an invitation to come to terms.

“I’ve a right-down, hearty admiration for you, Miss White.  I express it whenever I get the chance; I’m not ashamed of my admiration.”

“But I am,” said Eliza, indignantly.  “It’s very unkind of you.”

Harkness looked at her, failing to unravel her meaning.

“There ain’t anything a young lady likes better than to have an admirer.  She mayn’t always like him, but she always likes him to be admiring of her.”

However true this philosophy of the inner secrets of the heart might be, Eliza did not admit it for a moment.  She denounced his behaviour, but it was clear, as the saying is, that she was speaking over the head of her audience.  The youth evidently received it as a new idea that, when he had spoken only in her praise, she could seriously object.

“Why now,” he burst forth, “if any young lady took to admiring me, thinking a heap of me and talking about me to her friends, d’ye think I’d be cut up?  I’d be pleased to that extent I’d go about on the broad grin.  I mightn’t want to marry just yet; and when I did, I mightn’t possibly take up with her; but I can tell you, as soon as I was disposed to marry, I’d have a soft side towards her; I’d certainly think it right to give her the first chance in considering who I’d have.  And that’s all I ask of you, Miss White.  You won’t have anything to do with me (why, I can’t think), but I just give it put that I’m an admirer, and I hang on, hoping that you’ll think better of it.”