‘You lie, you dog! you lie, you lie, you lie,’ said the parrot.

‘Madam,’ said he with a shake of his head, ’’tis hoping against hope.  Time will add to my wrinkles without softening her aversion.  I utterly despair.  While there remained one spark of hope I should never have dreamed of leaving Chapelizod.’

Here there was a considerable pause, during which the parrot occasionally repeated, ‘You lie, you lie—­you dog—­you lie.’

’Of course, Sir, if the chance be not worth waiting for, you do well to be gone wherever your business or your pleasures, Sir, invite you,’ said Aunt Becky, a little loftily.

‘What a fop!’ said the parrot.  ‘You lie, you dog!’

’Neither business, Madam, nor pleasures invite me.  My situation here has been most distressing.  So long as hope cheered me, I little regarded what might be said or thought; but I tell you honestly that hope is extinguished; and it has grown to me intolerable longer to remain in sight of that treasure for which I cannot cease to wish, and which I never can possess.  I’ve grown, Madam, to detest the place.’

Aunt Becky, with her head very high, adjusted in silence, the two China mandarins on the mantelpiece—­first, one very carefully, then the other.  And there was a pause, during which one of the lap-dogs screamed; and the monkey, who had boxed his ears, jumped, with a ringing of his chain, chattering, on the back of the arm-chair in which the grim suitor sat.  Mr. Dangerfield would have given the brute a slap in the face, but that he knew how that would affect Miss Rebecca Chattesworth.

‘So, Madam,’ said he, standing up abruptly, ’I am here to thank you most gratefully for the countenance given to my poor suit, which, here and now, at last and for ever, I forego.  I shall leave for England so soon as my business will allow; and as I made no secret of my suit, so I shall make none of the reasons of my departure.  I’m an outspoken man, Madam; and as the world knew my hopes, I shall offer them no false excuses for my departure; but lift my hat, and bow to fortune—­a defeated man.’

‘Avez-vous dine mon petit coquin?’ said the parrot.

’Well, Sir, I will not altogether deny you have reason for what you design; and it may be, ’tis as well to bring the matter to a close, though your resolution has taken me by surprise.  She hath shown herself so perverse in this respect, that I allow I see no present likelihood of a change; and indeed I do not quite understand my niece; and, very like, she does not comprehend herself.’

Mr. Dangerfield almost smiled one of his grim disconcerting smiles, and a cynical light played over his face; and the black monkey behind him grinned and hugged himself like his familiar.  The disappointed gentleman thought he understood Miss Gertrude pretty well.

‘I thought,’ said Aunt Becky; ’I suspected—­did you—­a certain young gentleman in this neighbourhood—­’