"Call it foolish, romantic sentiment, if you like. Is there no way to shame me out of it?"
He shook his head slowly.
"You don't mean that."
"But if I say that I do; if I insist that I am willing to be shamed out of it."
His smile was that of a brother who remembers tardily to be loving-kind.
"I shall leave that task for some one who cares less for you and for your true happiness than I do, or ever shall. And it will be a mighty thankless service that that 'some one' will render you."
"But I ought to be whipped and sent to bed," she protested, almost tearfully. "Do you know what I have done?—how I have——"
She could not quite put it in words, even for him, and he helped her generously, as before.
"I know what Kent hasn't done; which is more to the point. But he will do it fast enough if you will give him half a chance."
"No," she said definitively.