"And permit me to add, is most fortunate in having secured so fair and eloquent an advocate," returned Lyttleton with a bow and a mocking smile; "yet I must beg to be excused for my inability to see in him the paragon of perfection your rose-colored glasses would make him."
"If my glasses are rose-colored, permit me to say, yours are evidently begrimed with London smoke," retorted Nell.
"You hate me because I am an Englishman," he said gloomily; "and it is most unjust, since I had personally nothing whatever to do with what you Americans are pleased to style the oppressions of the mother country."
"No, I don't think I absolutely hate you, Mr. Lyttleton," she said meditatively, staying her needle in mid air for an instant; "on the contrary I have occasionally found your society not at all disagreeable; but," and the needle again went swiftly in and out, while her eyes were fixed upon her work, "I think if I were in need of a protector from—any great immediate danger—an expected attack by hostile Indians for instance, I should prefer one of my countrymen by my side."
"Now, Nell, that was really too bad," remarked Clare, after Lyttleton had gone. "The English are hardly less brave as a nation than ourselves."
"Of course, I don't deny that, but he's an exception, and deserving of all and more than I gave him for his mean way of depreciating a—"
"An absent rival," put in Clare with a laugh, as Nell paused for an appellation suited to Kenneth's worth. "Really I think you might forgive his evident jealousy, which is certainly flattering to you."
"No, not a rival but a far better and nobler man than himself," said the girl, the rose deepening on her cheek.
Lyttleton went away full of anger and chagrin, and lay awake half the night trying to contrive some means of convincing Miss Lamar that no more valiant man than himself was anywhere to be found.
He summoned his German valet at an unusually early hour the next morning.