"I should think you would find it vastly more interesting."
"I do; especially when you are one of the people I am permitted to study."
"If you think I will permit it long, you are mistaken," said Hermione, who was beginning to lose her temper, without precisely knowing why. She took up her book and a piece of embroidery she had brought with her, as though she would go.
"You cannot help my making a study of you," returned the professor, calmly. "If you leave me now, I regard it as an interesting feature in your case."
"I will afford you that much interest, at all events," answered Hermione, rising to her feet. She was annoyed, and the blood rose to her delicate cheeks, while her downcast lashes hid the anger in her eyes. But she did not know the man, if she thought he would let himself be treated so lightly. She knew neither him nor his weapons.
"Miss Carvel, permit me to ask your forgiveness," he said. "I am so fond of hearing myself talk that my tongue runs away with me."
"Why do you tease me so?" asked Hermione, suddenly raising her eyes and facing Cutter. But before he could answer her she laid down her work and her book, and walked slowly away from him. She reached the opposite side of the broad conservatory, and turned back.
Cutter's whole manner had changed the moment he saw that she was seriously annoyed. He knew well enough that he had said nothing for which the girl could be legitimately angry, but he understood her antipathy to him too well not to know that it could easily be excited at any moment to an open expression of dislike. On the present occasion, however, he had resolved to fathom, if possible, the secret cause of the feeling the beautiful Hermione entertained against him.
"Miss Carvel," he said, very gently, as she advanced again towards him, "I like to talk to you, of all people, but you do not like me,—forgive my saying it, for I am in earnest,—and I lose my temper because I cannot find out why."
Hermione stood still for a moment, and looked straight into the professor's eyes; she saw that they met hers with such an honest expression of regret that her heart was touched. She stooped and picked a flower, and held it in her hand some seconds before she answered.