"Guide right!" he mused alone. "At last, H.K., your nickname's got a meaning worth living up to!"
While he mused, Flora, enraged both for him and against him, and with the rage burning in her eye and on her brow, stood before her seated grandmother, mutely giving gaze for gaze until the elder knew.
The old woman resumed her needle. "And all you have for it," was the first word, "is his pity, eh?"
"Wait!" murmured the girl. "I will win yet, if I have to lose--"
"Yes?" skeptically simpered the grandam, "--have to lose yourself to do it?"
The two gazed again until the maiden quietly nodded and her senior sprang half up:
"No, no! ah, no-no-no! There's a crime awaiting you, but not that! Oh, no, you are no such fool!"
"No?" The girl came near, bent low and with dancing eyes said, "I'll be fool enough to lead him on till his sense of honor--"
"Sense of--oh, ho, ho!"
"Sense of his honor and mine--will make him my prisoner. Or else--!" The speaker's eyes burned. Her bosom rose and fell.