She blushed violently, but quickly overcoming a combined rush of surprise and anger, added with an emphasis as charming as it was unexpected.
"I myself am, perhaps, swordsman enough to satisfy the impudence and vanity of Monsieur Beverley, Lieutenant in the American army."
"Pardon me, Mademoiselle; forgive me, I beg of you," he exclaimed, earnestly modulating his voice to sincerest beseechment; "I really did not mean to be impudent, nor—"
Her vivacity cleared with a merry laugh.
"No apologies, I command you," she interposed. "We will have them after I have taught you a fencing lesson."
From a shelf she drew down a pair of foils and presenting the hilts, bade him take his choice.
"There isn't any difference between them that I know of," she said, and then added archly; "but you will feel better at last, when all is over and the sting of defeat tingles through you, if you are conscious of having used every sensible precaution."
He looked straight into her eyes, trying to catch what was in her mind, but there was a bewildering glamour playing across those gray, opal-tinted wells of mystery, from which he could draw only a mischievous smile-glint, direct, daring, irresistible.
"Well," he said, taking one of the foils, "what do you really mean? Is it a challenge without room for honorable retreat?"
"The time for parley is past," she replied, "follow me to the battle-ground."