“Hospitable, upon my word!  You spin some spiteful idea out of every sentence I utter and are not even entitled to the compliment which Chesterfield paid to old Samuel Johnson, ’The utmost I can do for him is to consider him a respectable Hottentot.’  If I did not know that instead of proving a punishment it would gratify you beyond measure, I would take a vow not to speak to you again for a month; but the consciousness of the happiness I should thereby bestow upon you, vetoes the resolution.  Do you know that even a Comanche chief, or a Bechuana of the desert, shames your inhospitality?  I assure you I am the victim of hopeless ennui, am driven to the verge of desperation; for Mr. Allston will probably not return until to-morrow, and it is raining so hard that I can not wander out of doors.  Here I am shut up in this dreary house, which reminds me of the descriptions of that doleful retreat for sinners in Normandy, where the inmates pray eleven hours a day, dig their own graves every evening, and if they chance to meet one another, salute each other with ‘Memento mori!’ Ugh! if there remains one latent spark of chivalry in your soul, I beseech you be merciful!  Do not go off to your den, but stay here and entertain me.  It is said that you read bewitchingly, and with unrivalled effect; pray favor me this morning.  I will promise to lay my hand on my lips; it is not white enough for a flag of truce?  I will be meek, amiable, docile, absolutely silent.”

Estelle swept aside a mass of papers from the corner of the sofa, and, taking Mr. Murray’s hand, drew him to a seat beside her.

“Your ‘amiable silence,’ my fair cousin, is but a cunningly fashioned wooden horse.  Timco Danaos et dona ferentes!  I am to understand that you actually offer me your hand as a flag of truce?  It is wonderfully white and pretty; but excuse me, C’est une main de fer, gantee de velours!  Your countenance, so serenely radiant, reminds me of what Madame Noblet said of M. de Vitri, ’His face looked just like a stratagem!’ Reading aloud is a practice in which I never indulge, simply because I cordially detest it, and knowing this fact, it is a truly feminine refinement of cruelty on your part to select this mode of penance.  Nevertheless, your appeal to my chivalry, which always springs up, armed cap-a-pie ‘to do or die’; and since read I must, I only stipulate that I may be allowed to select my book.  Just now I am profoundly interested in a French work on infusoria, by Dujardin; and as you have probably not studied it, I will select those portions which treat of the animalcula that inhabit grains of sugar and salt and drops of water; so that by the time lunch is ready, your appetite will be whetted by a knowledge of the nature of your repast.  According to Leeuwenhoek, Muller, Gleichen, and others, the campaigns of Zenzis-Khan, Alexander, Attila, were not half so murderous as a single fashionable dinner; and the battle of Marengo was a farce in comparison with the swallowing of a cup of tea, which contains—­”