If I loved any woman--which, thank Fortune! at this present time I do not--and she had the bad taste not to return it, I should take my hat, make her a bow, and go directly and love somebody else made of flesh and blood, instead of cast iron! You know the old song, Ormiston: 'If she be not fair for me What care I how fair she be!'" "Kingsley, you know nothing about it!" said Ormiston, impatiently.

"So stop talking nonsense.

If you are cold-blooded, I am not; and--I love her!" Sir Norman slightly shrugged his shoulders, and flung his smoked-out weed into a heap of fire-wood.
"Are we near her house ?" he asked.

"Yonder is the bridge." "And yonder is the house," replied Ormiston, pointing to a large ancient building--ancient even for those times--with three stories, each projecting over the other.

"See! while the houses on either side are marked as pest-stricken, hers alone bears no cross.