“I suppose,” she said, with cutting slowness, “that you do not even know that you are insolent. Take your hand away,” in arrogant command.
He removed it with an unabashed half-smile.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I didn't even know I'd put it there. It was a break—but I wanted to keep you.”
That he not only wanted to keep her, but intended to do so was apparent. His air was neither rough nor brutal, but he had ingeniously placed himself in the outlet between the big table and the way to the door. He put his hands in his pockets in his vulgar, unconscious way, and watched her.
“Say, Lady Joan!” he broke forth, in the frank outburst of a man who wants to get something over. “I should be a fool if I didn't see that you're up against it—hard! What's the matter?” His voice dropped again.
There was something in the drop this time which—perhaps because of her recent emotion—sounded to her almost as if he were asking the question with the protecting sympathy of the tone one would use in speaking to a child. How dare he! But it came home to her that Jem had once said “What's the matter?” to her in the same way.
“Do you think it likely that I should confide in you?” she said, and inwardly quaked at the memory as she said it.
“No,” he answered, considering the matter gravely. “It's not likely—the way things look to you now. But if you knew me better perhaps it would be likely.”
“I once explained to you that I do not intend to know you better,” she gave answer.
He nodded acquiescently.