Tregarvon winced, seeing now the pitfall into which he had suffered himself to be led.
“Is that the impression I’ve been giving you?” he asked. “Do I advertise myself as such a blooming bounder as that would signify?”
“Forgive me,” she said, with a little laugh which might have meant anything from veiled ridicule to a keen appreciation of a palpable hit. “I suspect it is the way of your world to be austerely sufficient unto itself. You may contradict me if I am wrong.”
“Nonsense!” he exclaimed generously. “You are as much of my world as I am.”
“Oh, no!” she objected: “we are only poor outlanders. I was called that once, in Boston; not spitefully, of course, but rather as an excuse for my shortcomings, I fancy.”
“Whoever said it was a snob,” he exploded. “Boston is horribly provincial, at times, you know.”
“And Philadelphia never is?”
“I shouldn’t dare to make the claim too broad. But I am sure we recognize the fact that there is an America west of the Alleghenies—and south of Mason and Dixon’s line.”
“That is charitable, at least,” she conceded. “Still, you think it is left for you to demonstrate success where others have failed—in the Ocoee undertaking.”
“I hadn’t thought of it in that way,” he answered, with due modesty. “Indeed, I know little or nothing about the early history of the mine. My father became interested in it some years before he died, and I think he always regarded it as a dead loss. But he bought the stock, or rather, I should say, had it forced upon him, when it was pretty cheap, and——”