‘Then you have deceived me.’

’I will never deceive you.  Only say that you will love me, and I will be as true to you as the North Pole.’

‘Is that true to me?’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘But if I don’t love you?’

‘Yes, you do!’

‘Do I?’

‘I beg your pardon,’ said Dolly.  ’I didn’t mean to say that.  Of course a man shouldn’t make sure of a thing.’

’Not in this case, Mr Longstaff; because really I entertain no such feeling.’

‘But you can if you please.  Just let me tell you who I am.’

‘That will do no good whatever, Mr Longstaff.’

’Let me tell you at any rate.  I have a very good income of my own as it is.’

‘Money can have nothing to do with it.’

’But I want you to know that I can afford it.  You might perhaps have thought that I wanted your money.’

’I will attribute nothing evil to you, Mr Longstaff.  Only it is quite out of the question that I should—­respond as I suppose you wish me to; and therefore, pray, do not say anything further.’

She went to the head of the little steps but he interrupted her.  ‘You ought to hear me,’ he said.

‘I have heard you.’

’I can give you as good a position as any man without a title in England.’

’Mr Longstaff, I rather fancy that wherever I may be I can make a position for myself.  At any rate I shall not marry with a view of getting one.  If my husband were an English Duke I should think myself nothing, unless I was something as Isabel Boncassen.’

When she said that she did not bethink herself that Lord Silverbridge would be in the course of nature an English Duke.  But the allusion to an English Duke told intensely on Dolly, who had suspected that he had a noble rival.  ’English Dukes aren’t so easily got,’ he said.

’Very likely not.  I might have expressed my meaning better had I said an English Prince.’

‘That’s quite out of the question,’ said Dolly.  ’They can’t do it,—­by Act of Parliament,—­except in some hugger-mugger left-handed way, that wouldn’t suit you at all.’

’Mr Longstaff,—­you must forgive me,—­if I say—­that of all the gentlemen—­I have ever met in this country or in any other—­you are the—­most obtuse.’  This she brought out in little disjointed sentences, not with any hesitation, but in a way to make every word she uttered more clear to an intelligence which she did not believe to be bright.  But in this belief she did some injustice to Dolly.  He was quite alive to the disgrace of being called obtuse, and quick enough to avenge himself at the moment.

‘Am I?’ said he.  ’How humble-minded you must be when you think me a fool because I have fallen in love with such a one as yourself.’

‘I like you for that,’ she replied laughing, ’and withdraw the epithet as not being applicable.  Now we are quits and can forget and forgive;—­only let there be the forgetting.’