She hesitated a moment again. It was not the first time she had encountered this light and graceful obstinacy, and found it more difficult to cope with than words apparently more serious.
"I have never had an admirer of exactly that quality before," she said.
"Oh," he said, airily, "don't argue from the ground that it is a bad quality!"
"Has it never struck you," she suggested, "that there is something of the same quality, whether it is good, bad, or indifferent, in all the persons who are connected with the Westoria lands? I have felt once or twice lately, when I have looked around the parlors, as if I must have suddenly emigrated, the atmosphere was so different. They have actually rather crowded out the rest—those men."
It was his turn to pause now, and he did so, looking out of the window, evidently ill at ease, and hesitant for the moment.
"My dear child," he said, at length, "there may be truth in what you say; but—I may as well be frank with you—the thing is necessary."
"Richard," she said, quickly, prompted to the question by a sudden, vague thought, "what have you to do with the Westoria lands? Why do you care so much about them?"
"I have everything to do with them—and nothing," he answered. "The legal business connected with them, and likely to result from the success of the scheme, will be the making of me, that is all. I haven't been an immense success so far, you know, and it will make me an immense success and a man of property. Upon my word, a nice little lobbyist you are, to look frightened at the mere shadow of a plot!"
"I am not a lobbyist," she exclaimed. "I never wanted to be one. That was only a part of the nonsense I have talked all my life. I have talked too much nonsense. I wish—I wish I had been different!"
"Don't allow your repentance to be too deep," he remarked, dryly. "You won't be able to get over it."