“So do I. There's only one condition I make: whenever you mean to take off the gloves, and intend to hit out hard, that you 'll say so before. Is that agreed?”
“It's a bargain.”
She held out her hand frankly, and he took it as cordially; and in a hearty squeeze the compact was ratified.
“Shall I tell you,” said she, as they drew nigh the Abbey, “that you are a great puzzle to us all here? We none of us can guess how so great a person as yourself should condescend to come down to such an out-o'-the-world spot, and waste his fascinations on such dull company.”
“Your explanation, I 'll wager, was the true one: let me hear it.”
“I called it eccentricity; the oddity of a man who had traded so long in oddity that he grew to be inexplicable, even to himself, and that an Irish country-house was one of the few things you had not 'done,' and that you were determined to 'do' it.”
“There was that, and something more,” said Maitland, thoughtfully.
“The 'something more' being, I take it, the whole secret.”
“As you read me like a book, Miss Rebecca, all I ask is, that you 'll shut the volume when you 've done with it, and not talk over it with your literary friends.”
“It is not my way,” said she, half pettishly; and they reached the door as she spoke.