'
'It's ever so much past five,' said the legislator, 'and I had
intended to be in the House more than an hour ago. Good-bye. Give
my love to Miss Cassewary.'
'Certainly. Miss Cassewary is your most devoted friend. Won't you
bring your sister to see me some day?'
'When she is in town I will.'
'I should like to know her. Good-bye.'
As he hurried down to the House in a hansom, he thought over it
all, and told himself that he feared it would not do. She might
perhaps accept him, but if so, she would do it simply in order
that she might become Duchess of Omnium. She might, he thought,
have accepted him then, had she chosen. He had spoken plainly
enough. But she had laughed at him. He felt that if she loved him,
there ought to have been something of that feminine tremor, of
that doubting, hesitating half-avowal of which he had perhaps read
in novels, and which his own instincts taught him to desire. But
there had been no tremor nor hesitating. 'No; my Lord, I do not,'
she had said when he asked her to her face whether she liked him
well enough to be his wife.
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