"Yes," he said; "you picked them yourself, the girl told me so. I asked her. And you put them in my room. If I take your rose back you must take mine."
"Well," she said, and she took it slowly, and laid it on the table beside her.
He drew a long breath, then the color came into his face and the wild, daring Ferrers' spirit shone in his eyes.
"That's an exchange," he said. "It's a challenge and an acceptance. Don't you see what you have done in cutting me off and flinging me aside, Miss Margaret?"
"What have I done?" said Margaret.
"Yes! You have given me back my rose, but you forget that you have worn it, that it has been in your dress, that you have touched it, that it's like a part of yourself. And you have taken my rose, which has been in my room all night, while I dreamt of you——"
"Lord Leyton!" she panted, half rising.
"Yes!" he said, confronting her with the sudden passion which lay dormant in him and always, like a tiger, ready to spring to the surface. "You can throw my offer of friendship in my face, you can put me coldly aside, and—and wipe out last night as if it had never been, as if you had done some great wrong in talking to such a man as I am; but you can't rob me of the rose you have touched, ah! and worn."
"Give—give it me back!" she exclaimed, with a trepidation which was not altogether anger or fear. "Give it me back, my lord. You have no right——"