"I should hope——" begins the professor.
"You needn't. It has nothing to do with it, nothing at all. Go back and tell Mr. Hardinge so; and tell him, too, that when next he goes a-wooing, he had better do it in person."
"I am afraid I have damaged my mission," says the professor, who has never once looked at her since his first swift glance.
"Your mission?"
"Yes. It was mere nervousness that prevented him coming to you first himself. He said he had little to go on, and he said something about a flower that you gave him——"
Perpetua makes a rapid movement toward a side table, takes a flower from a bouquet there, and throws it at the professor. There is no excuse to be made for her beyond the fact that her heart feels breaking, and people with broken hearts do strange things every day.
"I would give a flower to anyone!" says she in a quick scornful fashion. The professor catches the ungraciously given gift, toys with it, and—keeps it. Is that small action of his unseen?
"I hope," he says in a dull way, "that you are not angry with him because he came first to me. It was a sense of duty—I know, I feel—compelled him to do it, together with his honest diffidence about your affection for him. Do not let pride stand in the way of——"
"Nonsense!" says Perpetua, with a rapid movement of her hand. "Pride has no part in it. I do not care for Mr. Hardinge—I shall not marry him."
A little mist seems to gather before the professor's eyes. His glasses seem in the way, he drops them, and now stands gazing at her, as if disbelieving his senses. In fact he does disbelieve in them.