"I just want to do right. I admit I've done wrong. But what I've done, I've done in ignorance. I didn't know it would be against your reputation for me to come here constant, and to take you on the river, and go with you to the theater and the Coliseum."
"No, I don't suppose you did," said Cora, holding her hand very carefully now that he had been such a fool as to put a weapon in it. "No, I suppose not, Mr. Harper."
The "Mr." was stressed very slightly, but she felt him flinch a little.
"Well, Miss Cora," he said huskily, "it's like this. I just want to do right by you as any other gentleman would."
"Oh, do you, Mr. Harper." She fixed him with the eye of a basilisk.
"Yes," he said, and the sweat broke out on his forehead. "Whatever it's got to be."
She sensed the forehead rather than saw it. Every nerve in her was now alert. Yet the desire uppermost was to spit in his face, or to dash her fist in it with all the strength she had, but at such a moment she could not afford to give rein to the woman within. She must bide her time. The fish was hooked, but it still remained to land it.
"Well, Mr. Harper, I am sure you are most kind. But you know better than I can tell you that there is only one thing you can do under the circumstances." And Miss Dobbs suddenly laughed in Mr. Harper's face, in order to show that she was not such a fool as to treat his heroics seriously.
"What's that, Miss Cora?" he asked, huskily.
"What's that, Mr. Harper? What innocence! I wonder where you was brought up?"