"You are a little Jew, that's what you are," Lennox, affecting annoyance, replied.
Cassy smiled, "I like your jeu d'esprit. But not well enough to accept money as a gift."
"Good Lord!" Lennox protested. "Look here! I am not giving money away. I don't mean it as a gift. Pay me back whenever you like. Until then, what do you expect me to do with that thing? Give serenades? No, take it back to your father. I know just how he feels about it. He told me."
Cassy shifted the bundle. "Good-bye then." But as he still blocked the way, she added: "Will you let me pass?"
Moralists maintain that a man should never argue with a woman, particularly when she is young and good-looking. He should yield, they assert. Cassy's youth and beauty said nothing audible to Lennox. They said nothing of which he was then aware. In addition he was not a moralist. But there are influences, as there are bacilli, which unconsciously we absorb. For some time he had been absorbing a few. He did not realise it then. When he did, he was in prison. That though was later. At the moment he threw up his hands.
"I surrender. Will you mind putting it down somewhere?"
Cassy turned. Beyond was a table and near it a chair to which she went. There she dumped the violin. In so doing she saw Margaret's picture.
"What a lovely girl!"
Lennox, who had followed, nodded. "That is Miss Austen to whom I am engaged."
"Oh!" said Cassy. She did not know that Lennox was engaged. But suddenly the room had become uncomfortably warm and she blurted it: "How happy she must be!"