"How? A duel?" asked the outlaw, laughing at her passionate vehemence.
"Yes, a duel," she answered, with unmoved gravity.
"You are a brave little girl, Miss Meredith," the outlaw answered, resting his white, well-formed hand on the back of a chair with easy grace, while he regarded her attentively. "You make me admire you more than ever."
"I am sorry for that," said Jaquelina, with spirit.
"Why?" he inquired, seeming to find pleasure in the very sound of her voice, although her words were so scornful. "Is admiration so distasteful to you?"
"From you it is," she said, and although he affected indifference her scornful tone had an arrow in it that secretly pierced his heart.
"What manner of a man might he be whose admiration would be acceptable to you, fair lady?" he inquired, coldly, yet with a certain wistfulness in his tone.
Jaquelina turned her dark eyes on the masked face of the outlaw, and regarded him steadily as she said, firmly:
"A man quite your opposite in everything—an honest, honorable, noble man, brave and without reproach."
"Sans peur et sans reproche—the Ardelle motto," muttered the outlaw beneath his dark mustache. "So, Miss Meredith, you are holding up before me a glass wherein I may see all that I am not?"