“What is the matter with you?” said Rose, when she and her cousin had left the gentlemen and were alone in the drawing-room.

“Nothing at all.”

“You don’t say a word.”

“I will, when I have a word to say.”

“I thought you always had words enough,” said Rose.

“Not when I haven’t time too.”

“Time? what, for words?”

“Yes.”

“What was the matter with the time?”

“It was filled up.”

“Well, you might have helped fill it.”

“Nothing can be more than full, very well,” said Elizabeth contemptuously.  “I never want my words to be lost on the outside of a conversation.”

“You think a great deal of your words,” said her cousin.

“I want other people should.”

“You do!  Well —­ I never expect them to think much of mine.”

“That’s not true, Rose.”

“It isn’t?”

“No; and your smile when you said it spoke that it wasn’t.”

“Well, I don’t care, they are thought enough of,” said Rose, half crying.

Elizabeth walked to the window and stood within the curtain, looking out into the street; and Rose bestowed her pouting lips and brimful eyes upon the full view of the fire.

“What’s made you so cross?” she said after a quarter of an hour, when the tears were dried.

“I am not cross.”

“Did you ever see anybody so amusing as Rufus Landholm?”

“Yes, he’s amusing. —­ I don’t like people that are too amusing.”

“How can anybody be too amusing?”

“He can make it too much of his business.”

“Who? —­ Rufus?”

“No, anybody.  You asked how anybody could.”

“Well I dont see how you can think he is too amusing.”

“Why, that is all you care for in a man.”

“It isn’t!  I care for a great deal else.  What do you care for?”

“I don’t know, I am sure,” said Elizabeth; “but I should say, everything else.”

“Well, I think people are very stupid that aren’t amusing,” said Rose.

Which proposition the ladies illustrated for another quarter of an hour.

The gentlemen came in then, one after another, but Elizabeth did not move from her window.

“I have something of yours in my possession, Miss Haye,” said Rufus, coming to the outside of the curtain within which she stood.

“What?” said Elizabeth unceremoniously.

“Your father.”

“What are you going to do with him?”

Rufus laughed a little; and Winthrop remarked there was nothing like straightforward dealing to confound a manoeuvrer.

“I have a desire to put him out of my hands, into yours,” said Rufus; —­ “but then, I have also a desire to make him fast there.”

“My bracelet!” said Elizabeth.

It had a likeness of Mr. Haye in cameo.

“Where did you get it?”