When she let him see her face again it was perfectly straight, but there were twin imps of mockery dancing in the eyes of desire.
“Between you and Mr. Carfax it is hard for a poor country mouse to find breathing space,” she asserted. “Am I to understand that you are trying to congratulate me?”
Tregarvon frowned heavily. “No; Poictiers is the one to be congratulated—if you were not laughing at him.”
“I wasn’t,” she denied promptly. “He is much too splendid to be laughed at. Don’t criticise the word; it is the only one that fits him.”
“Then you were laughing at me?”
“No.”
“At what I said, then? that is just as cruel.”
“Why will you insist upon being so quarrelsome? I was laughing because I couldn’t help it. Let us talk about something else; about your mine. Have you been having any more of the mysterious trouble?”
“Yes; it is one thing after another. You heard what Poictiers was telling at the table this evening. He made it sound like hard luck, but it isn’t luck; it’s design. Some one is making the trouble for us.”
“Who would do such a thing as that?”