"Is it some favor you have to ask?" she said, with cold, pitiless hauteur, seeing that he hesitated.
"Thanks," he said. "I was waiting for a suggestion—I must put it in that way. Yes, I have to ask a favor. My lady, I am a stranger to you——"
She waved her hand as if she did not care so much as a withered blade of grass for his personal history, and with a little twitch of the lips he continued:
"I am a stranger to you, but I still venture to ask your assistance."
She looked and smiled like one who has known all along what was coming, but to please his own whim, had waited quite naturally.
"Exactly," she said. "I have no money——"
Then he started and stood before her, and what there was of manliness awoke within him.
"Money!" he said. "Are you mad?"
Lady Lenore stared at him haughtily.
"I fear that you are," she said. "Did you not demand—ask is too commonplace a word to describe a request made by a man of a woman alone and unprotected—did you not demand money, sir?"