"I don't seem to recall that it is necessary for one to adopt one's mother's friends as one's own," said Louise, without the least hesitancy. His assumption of an easily-penetrated ingratiating manner had thoroughly disgusted her; she wanted him to take his departure; and she chose the most straightout means to that end. There was no possible way for her to know that Jesse enjoyed the early taunts of some women much as he relished the cocktails with which he preceded his dinners, and for very much the same reason—they were appetizers.
He rose with an air of irresolution which he was far from feeling.
"I fear," he said, resignedly, "that something has happened—or perhaps that something has been said—to predispose or prejudice you against me, Miss Treharne. It is a conclusion to which I am driven."
He paused, then faced her with an appearance of frankness which he was adept at assuming.
"Miss Treharne," he went on, cleverly adopting a tone with a tremolo note in it, "you will grant, I think, that men—men, that is to say, who cut any sort of figure in affairs"—a flourish here—"often are misjudged. Without in the least desiring to pose as one who has been a victim of such misjudgment, I feel, nevertheless——" Here he stopped, having carefully calculated his stopping point, and, with impulsively extended hands, he went on with a beautifully acted semblance of real feeling: "Miss Treharne, I merely ask you to give me a chance to prove myself; a chance at least to wear the candidate's stripes for your friendship."
Despite her youthfulness and her utter inexperience with men of Jesse's type, Louise, aided by an unusually subtle intuition, and mindful of what she had heard of Jesse, caught the hollow ring in his tone, detected the false shifty light in his now furtive, eager eyes.
She rose.
"You are quite overpoweringly in earnest over what seems to me a very trivial matter, Mr. Jesse," she said with a little laugh that sounded harsh even to her own ears.
"You gravely underestimate the value of your friendship in calling it trivial, Miss Treharne," said Jesse, rising also; for at length he was ready to accept the dismissal which a less thick-skinned man, even of his type, would have taken long before.
"I have not been in the habit of placing any sort of an appraisal upon the value of my friendship," she replied, succinctly.