"There might be other reasons why you did not stop me," he replied impulsively.
"Such as?"
"Well, you—you might have wanted me to go on."
He blurted it out.
"So," said she slowly, "you are apologizing to me for not going on?"
"I implore you, Lady Pippinworth," Tommy said, in much distress, "not to think me capable of that. If I moved you for a moment, I am far from boasting of it; it makes me only the more anxious to do what is best for you."
This was not the way it had shaped during dinner, and Tommy would have acted wisely had he now gone out to cool his head. "If you moved me?" she repeated interrogatively; but, with the best intentions, he continued to flounder.
"Believe me," he implored her, "had I known it could be done, I should have checked myself. But they always insist that you are an iceberg, and am I so much to blame if that look of hauteur deceived me with the rest? Oh, dear Lady Disdain," he said warmly, in answer to one of her most freezing glances, "it deceives me no longer. From that moment I knew you had a heart, and I was shamed—as noble a heart as ever beat in woman," he added. He always tended to add generous bits when he found it coming out well.
"Does the man think I am in love with him?" was Lady Disdain's inadequate reply.
"No, no, indeed!" he assured her earnestly. "I am not so vain as to think that, nor so selfish as to wish it; but if for a moment you were moved——"