“You mean that it was a great liberty on my part—an unwarrantable liberty?”
“Something like it.”
“That the terms which existed between us”—and now he spoke with a tremulous voice, and a look of much agitation—“could not have warranted my daring to point out a fault, even in your manner; for I am sure, after all, your nature had nothing to do with it?”
She nodded, and was silent.
“That's pretty plain, anyhow,” said he, moving towards the table, where he had placed his hat. “It's a sharp lesson to give a fellow though, all the more when he was unprepared for it.”
“You forget that the first sharp lesson came from you.”
“All true; there 's no denying it.” He took up his hat as she spoke, and moved, half awkwardly, towards the window. “I had a message for you from the girls, if I could only remember it. Do you happen to guess what it was about?”
She shrugged her shoulders slightly as a negative, and was silent.
“I 'll be shot if I can think what it was,” muttered he; “the chances are, however, it was to ask you to do something or other, and as, in your present temper, that would be hopeless, it matters little that I have forgotten it.”
She made no answer to this speech, but quietly occupied herself arranging a braid of her hair that had just fallen down.