Page:Confessions of a wife (IA confessionsofwif00adamiala).pdf/38

accounts for it. I have been told that Mrs. Herwin was a Southern beauty, the extravagant kind, and that she led her husband a life. I never saw her, but I 'm sure the secretary resembles his mother. He looks remarkably handsome when he is insolent.

"My dear Mr. Herwin: I have spent twenty-four hours trying to decide whether to put your note into the fire, return it unanswered, or show it to my father. It is really unpleasant to receive such things. You put one in such a brutal light! As if it were a girl's fault because a man liked her. I don't wish to be ill-mannered; I 'd rather be barbarous: but you compel me to say, sir, that I disapprove of your persistence altogether. Pray, do you think I am the kind of woman who can be browbeaten into loving people? Perhaps you take me for the other sort that waits to be coaxed. Learn that I am neither.

"P.S. I told you that I esteemed you and would be your friend. You refused my friendship, and now you wonder that I decline your