She continued to gaze upon him thoughtfully, while he tried to look into her eyes, but was baffled because the radiant beams from the lady's orbs (as the elder Chenoweth might have said) rested somewhere dangerously near his chin, which worried him, for, though his chin made no retreat and was far from ill-looking, it was, nevertheless, that feature which he most distrusted. “Won't you tell me why not?” he repeated, uneasily.
“Because,” she answered at last, speaking hesitatingly, “because it isn't so easy a matter for me as you seem to think. You have not been introduced to me, and I know you never will be, and that what you told me was true.”
“Which part of what I told you?” The question escaped from him instantly.
“That the others might come when they liked, but that you could not.”
“Oh yes, yes.” His expression altered to a sincere dejection; his shoulders drooped, and his voice indicated supreme annoyance. “I might have known someone would tell you! Who was it? Did they say why I—”
“On account of your quarrel with my father.”
“My quarrel with your father!” he exclaimed; and his face lit with an elated surprise; his shoulders straightened. He took a step nearer her, and asked, eagerly: “Who told you that?”
“My father himself. He spoke of a Mr. Vanrevel whom he—disliked, and whom I must not meet; and, remembering what you had said, of course I knew that you were he.”
“Oh!” Crailey's lips began to form a smile of such appealing and inimitable sweetness that Voltaire would have trusted him; a smile alto-gether rose-leaves. “Then I lose you,” he said, “for my only chance to know you was in keeping it hidden from you. And now you understand!”
“No,” she answered, gravely, “I don't understand; that is what troubles me. If I did, and believed you had the right of the difference, I could believe it no sin that you should speak to me, should take me home now. I think it is wrong not to act from your own understanding of things.”