‘And yet you refused him?’

‘Yes.  You think I was foolish;—­do you not?’

‘I don’t think you were foolish if you didn’t care for him.’

’It was my destiny, I suppose; I daresay I was wrong.  Other girls marry without violent love, and do very well afterwards.  Look at Maria Clutterbuck.’

The name of Maria Clutterbuck had become odious to John Eames.  As long as Miss Demolines would continue to talk about herself he could listen with some amount of gratification.  Conversation on that subject was the natural progress of the Bayswater romance.  And if Madalina would only call her friend by her present name, he had no strong objection to an occasional mention of the lady; but the combined names of Maria Clutterbuck had come to be absolutely distasteful to him.  He did not believe in the Maria Clutterbuck friendship—­either in its past or present existence, as described by Madalina.  Indeed, he did not put strong faith in anything that Madalina said to him.  In the handsome gentleman with two thousand a year, he did not believe at all.  But the handsome gentleman had only been mentioned once in the course of his acquaintance with Miss Demolines, whereas Maria Clutterbuck had come up so often!  ‘Upon my word I must wish you good-bye,’ he said.  ’It is going for eleven o’clock, and I have to start tomorrow at seven.’

‘What difference does that make?’

‘A fellow wants to get a little sleep, you know.’

’Go, then;—­go and get your sleep.  What a sleepy-head generation it is.’  Johnny longed to ask whether the last generation was less sleepy-headed, and whether the gentleman with two thousand a year sat up talking all night before he pressed his foot for the last time on his native soil; but he did not dare.  As he said to himself afterwards, ’It would not do to bring the Bayswater romance too suddenly to termination!’ ‘But before you go,’ she continued, ’I must say the word to you about that picture.  Did you speak to Mr Dalrymple?’

’I did not.  I have been so busy with different things that I have not seen him.’

‘And now you are going?’

’Well—­to tell the truth, I think I shall see him tonight, in spite of my being so sleepy-headed.  I wrote him a line that I would look in and smoke a cigar with him if he chanced to be at home!’

’And that is why you want to go.  A gentleman cannot live without his cigar now.’

‘It is especially at your bidding that I am going to see him.’

’Go then—­and make your friend understand that if he continues this picture of his, he will bring himself to great trouble, and will probably ruin the woman for whom he professes, I presume, to feel something like friendship.  You may tell him that Mrs Van Siever has already heard of it.’

‘Who told her?’ demanded Johnny.

’Never mind.  You need not look at me like that.  It was not I. Do you suppose that secrets can be kept when so many people know them?  Every servant in Maria’s house knows all about it.’