"Do you mean that it is only her outward circumstances, her worldly ignorance, that has kept her so wonderfully indifferent?" he asked.
"So she is indifferent?" enquired Gerty with a smile.
"To me—yes."
"Oh, I didn't know that—I suspected—" her pause was tantalising, and she drew it out with an enjoyment that was almost wicked.
"You suspected—" he repeated the words with the nervous irritation which always seized him in moments of excitement.
"I honestly believed," she gave it to him with barely suppressed amusement, "that she really disliked you."
His curiosity changed suddenly to anger, and he remembered, while he choked back an impulsive exclamation, the rage for mastery he had once felt when he found a horse whose temper had more than matched his own. "Did she tell you so?" he demanded hotly.
"Oh, dear, no—she wouldn't for the world."
"Then you're wrong," he said with dogged resolution; "I can make her like me or not just as I choose."
"You can?" she looked lovely but incredulous.