stern, and I shall have much ado to please you: but when you get well used to me, you will perhaps like me again, — like me, I say, not love me. I suppose your love will effervesce in six months, or less.

I have observed in books written by men, that period assigned as the farthest to which a husband’s ardour extends. Yet, after all, as a friend and companion, I hope never to become quite distasteful to my dear master.”

“Distasteful! and like you again! I think I shall like you again, and yet again: and I will make you confess I do not only like, but love you — with truth, fervour, constancy.”

“Yet are you not capricious, sir?”

“To women who please me only by their faces, I am the very devil when I find out they have neither souls nor hearts —