"Then you can not blame me, can not be angry with me. And you will be ready to go with me to-morrow?"
"No, I think not. I am afraid, after all you have said, Captain Lancaster, that you really are vexed in your mind at the thought of taking me. I do not believe I ought to take advantage of your pretended readiness," she replied, sensitively, and with that perfect frankness that seemed to be one of her characteristics.
"And you refuse to go with me?" He gazed at her despairingly.
"I would rather not," decidedly.
He looked at the pretty face in some alarm. It had a very resolute air. Would she really carry out her threat of staying behind? He did not know much about American girls, but he had heard that they managed their own affairs rather more than their English sisters. This one looked exceedingly like the heroine of that familiar ballad:
"When she will, she will, depend on't,
And when she won't, she won't,
And there's an end on't."
She glanced up and saw him pulling at the ends of his mustache with an injured air, and a dark frown on his brow.
"Why do you look so mad? I should think you would be glad I'm not going."
"I am vexed. I wasn't aware that I looked mad. In England we put mad people into insane asylums," he replied, rather stiffly.