"Miss Brisbane, you must not do me an injustice," he earnestly entreated. "It was not my intention to instruct you to-day. I am honestly interested in your pictures, and had no thought of renewing an appeal. I was tempted and fell. If you will forgive me this time, I'll never preach again."
"I don't say I object to your preachment. I think I rather like it. I don't think I ever met a man who was so ready to sacrifice his own interest for an idea. It's rather amusing to meet a soldier who is ready to knock one down with a moral war-club." She ended with a mocking inflection of voice.
His face lost its eager, boyish expression. "I'm delighted to think I have amused you," he said, slowly. "It makes amends."
"Please don't be angry," she pleaded. "I didn't mean to be flippant."
"Your words were explicit," he replied, feeling at the moment that she was making a mock of him, and this duplicity hurt him.
She put forth her sweetest voice. "Please forgive me! I think your work very noble, only I can't understand how you can exile yourself to do it. Let us go down; it is time for lunch, and papa is waiting for you, I know."
It was unaccountable that a mocking tone, a derisive smile from this chance acquaintance, should so shake the soldier and so weaken him, but he descended the stair-way with a humiliating consciousness of having betrayed his heart to a fleering, luring daughter of wealth.
At the door of the library the girl paused. "Papa, are you asleep?"
The abrupt rustle of a newspaper preceded Brisbane's deep utterance. "Not at all—just reading the Star. Come in, Captain. Is lunch nearly ready?" he asked of Elsie.
"I think so. They are a little late. I'll go see."