But I was silent and ashamed already. Truly, it had been no fault but my own that I had taken up the gage she flung at me that night so long ago.
"But I'll not take it up this time," thought I to myself, cracking filberts and looking at her askance across the table.
"I do not understand you, Michael," she said, with a faint smile, ending in a sigh.
"Nor I you, bonnie Marie Hamilton," said I. "Suppose we both cry quits?"
"Not yet," she said; "I have a little score with you, unsettled."
"What score?" I asked, smiling. "Cannot you appeal to the law to have it settled?"
"La loi permet souvent ce que défend l'honneur," she said, with an innocent emphasis which left me sitting there, uncertain whether to laugh or blush. What the mischief did she mean, anyhow?
She picked up a filbert, tasted the kernel, dropped it, clasped her hands, elbows on the cloth, and gave me a malicious sidelong glance which still was full of that strange sweetness that ever set me on my guard, half angry, half bewitched.
"I wish you would let me alone!" I blurted out, like a country yokel at a quilting.
"I won't," she said.