“The melon was very good, Mr. Steele,” said Lina demurely, with a glimmer of fun in her black eyes.
“Miss Maynard, I don't know how I shall beg pardon, or humble myself enough for my outrageous treatment of you,” burst forth Arthur. “I don't know what I should have done if I had n't had an opportunity for apologizing pretty soon, and now I scarcely dare look you in the face.”
His chagrin and self-reproach were genuine enough, but he might have left off that last, for he had n't been looking anywhere else since he came into the room.
“You did shake me rather hard,” she said, with a smiling contraction of the black eyebrows.
Good heavens! had he actually shaken this divine creature,—this Cleopatra of a girl, whose queenly brow gave her hair the look of a coronet! He groaned in spirit, and looked so self-reproachful and chagrined that she laughed.
“I don't know about forgiving you for that, but I 'm so grateful you did n't take me to the lock-up that I suppose I ought not to mind the shaking.”
“But, Miss Maynard, you surely don't think I was in earnest about that?” he exclaimed, in strenuous deprecation.
“I don't know, I 'm sure,” she said doubtfully. “You looked as if you were capable of it.”
He was going on to protest still farther when she interrupted him, and said laughingly:—
“You take to apologizing so naturally that I 'd nearly forgotten that it was not you but I who was the real culprit. I must really make a few excuses myself before I hear any more from you.”