"That my comparatively recent return from school, and the open-mindedness naturally associated with that," Louise quietly interrupted, "made me a fair target for your somewhat labored and not particularly apt compliments. Yes, you erred decisively there."
"Again!" thought Jesse, bubbling with finely-concealed delight. "She is an empress right enough, whether she likes to be called that or not! What a prize!"
Aloud, he said with an air of chastened gravity:
"You do me scant justice there, Miss Treharne, but that is easily passed, seeing how chagrinedly conscious I am that I deserved your rebuke in the first instance. You are fond of motoring?" changing the subject with no great deftness.
"No," replied Louise, sufficiently out of hand. "I don't in the least care for it." The conversation was irksome to her and she would not pretend that it was not.
"I inquired," said Jesse, looking chapfallen though he did not in the least feel so, "because I had been hoping you might do me the honor to accept the use—the steady use—of one of my cars. I have several," this last with an ostentation that rather sickened Louise. But she could not allow the carefully veiled suggestion in his words to pass.
"Mr. Jesse," she said, reverting to her tone of deliberation and again gazing straight at him, "aside from the fact that, as I have told you, I don't in the least care for motoring, will you be good enough to suggest to me just one fairly intelligible reason why I should accept your proffer of the use—'the steady use'—of one of your cars? It may be that you will have some reason to offer for what, otherwise, I should deem a distinct impertinence."
Jesse's eyes gleamed with the joy of it. "What a prize!" he thought again.
"I seem, Miss Treharne," he said with a laugh which he purposely made uneasy, "to be stumbling upon one blunder after another. There is no reason for my having offered you the use of one of my cars—and I hasten to withdraw the offer, since it seems to offend you—other than my friendship of long standing with your mother and my desire—my hope, I was about to say—that you, too, might consider me worthy of your friendship."
It was rather adroitly turned, but it completely missed fire.