The Journal of a Disappointed Man

He: "Well, it's equally embarrassing any way." She: "Then I am serious." Tears. I say: "I wish you would take me only for what I am--a blackguard with no good intentions, yet no very evil ones--but still a blackguard, whom you seem to find has engaging manners." I breathe freely hoping to have escaped this terrible temptation and turn to go. But she, looking up smiling thro' a curtain of wet eyelashes, asks,-- "Won't the blackguard stop a little longer?" In a moment my earth works, redoubts, and bastions fall down, I rush forward impetuously into her arms shouting, "I will, I will, I will as long as for eternity." (Curtain.) I dramatised this little picture and much more last night before going to sleep when I was in a fever. I should succumb at once to the first really skilful coquette. November 9. Ludo We played Ludo together this evening and she won 2s. 6d. Handsomely gowned in black and wearing black ornaments, she sat with me in the lamplight on the sofa in the Morris Room, with the Ludo board between us placed on a large green cushion. Her face was white as parchment and her hair seemed an ebony black. I lolled in the opposite corner, a thin, elongated youth, with fair hair all stivvered up, dressed in a light-brown lounge suit with a good trouser crease, a soft linen collar and--a red tie! Between us, on its green cushion the Ludo board with its brilliantly coloured squares:--all of it set before a background formed by the straight-backed, rectangular, settle-like sofa, with a charming covering which went with the rest of the scheme.