"I have something of yours, Miss Wamphrey, which I must take the first opportunity of returning to you," he said.
"Something of mine? How can that be, Mr Percival? I am sure I never gave you anything of mine."
"Or rather there are two things: a white handkerchief marked with your name, and a black handkerchief, both of which you wore round your head on a certain occasion when we first met."
"Mr Percival," she said, with a change of colour, "do you think it is good taste to assail me whenever you happen to be alone with me, with this ridiculous delusion of yours?"
"They are still precisely as they were when you must have pulled them off: you know where I found them—thrust in among the roots of the rowan-trees in that little hollow under the brae. There was another thing," said John, "the skin of an orange."
When he said there was another thing, her eyes blazed up in sudden anxiety,—then they were dimmed with as sudden a shadow of relief. She had feared something else: therefore there must be something else to find there. And then her colour came back, and she laughed out, "The skin of an orange!" Oh, she understood perfectly what he meant! That was always what led him on. She understood every allusion. "That was a very innocent thing," she said; "I would like to know how you associate me with that."
"It gave me a kind of pleasure to see it," said John; "I thought to myself I was some good to her after all."
She paused, too, for a moment, casting down her eyes, and then she said: "I cannot really stand any longer listening to your nonsense about pocket-handkerchiefs and orange-skins. I hope you yourself know what you mean. I hope you have not—lost your head altogether. I don't want to be rude and leave you—but this is more than I shall ever give you the chance of saying to me again. Mr Percival, the next dance has begun."
"Is that all you have to say?" asked John.
"Every word—and too much!" she said.