The lady condescended to laugh a little, very low and very sweetly, but it was an undeniable laugh, and so I was grateful for it.
“You mistake me,” she said. “I took you for a superior person, that was all, and I think superior persons sometimes make mistakes.”
“What mistake have I fallen into, if you will be so good as to tell me?”
“Well, as a beginning, Mr. Tremorne, I think that if I was an English lady you would not venture to accost me as you have done to-night, without a proper introduction.”
“I beg your pardon. I considered myself introduced to you by Miss Hemster to-day at luncheon; and if our host had not so regarded it, I imagine he would have remedied the deficiency.”
“Mr. Hemster, with a delicacy which I regret to say seems to be unappreciated, knowing me to be a servant in his employ, did not put upon me the embarrassment of an introduction.”
“Really, Miss Stretton, I find myself compelled to talk to you rather seriously,” said I, with perhaps a regrettable trace of anger in my voice. “You show yourself to be an extremely ignorant young woman.”
Again she laughed very quietly.
“Oh!” she cried, with an exultation that had hitherto been absent from her conversation; “the veneer is coming off, and the native Englishman stands revealed in the moonlight.”
“You are quite right, the veneer is coming off. And now, if you have the courage of your statements, you will hear the truth about them. On the other hand, if you like to say sharp things and then run away from the consequences, there is the saloon, or there is the other side of the deck. Take your choice.”