"What you saw," she said, flushing up, "is exactly the way I shall do any pleading with the two animals you mention."
"Spur and curb and thrash us? Oh, my!"
"Not if you're bridle-wise, Captain Selwyn," she returned sweetly. "And you know you always are. And sometimes"—she crossed her crop and looked around at him reflectively—"sometimes, do you know, I am almost afraid that you are so very, very good, that perhaps you are becoming almost goody-good."
"What!" he exclaimed indignantly; but his only answer was her head thrown back and a ripple of enchanting laughter.
Later she remarked: "It's just as Nina says, after all, isn't it?"
"I suppose so," he replied suspiciously; "what?"
"That Gerald isn't really very wicked, but he likes to have us think so. It's a sign of extreme self-consciousness, isn't it," she added innocently, "when a man is afraid that a woman thinks he is very, very good?"
"That," he said, "is the limit. I'm going to ride by myself."
Her pleasure in Selwyn's society had gradually become such genuine pleasure, her confidence in his kindness so unaffectedly sincere, that, insensibly, she had fallen into something of his manner of badinage—especially since she realised how much amusement he found in her own smiling confusion when unexpectedly assailed. Also, to her surprise, she found that he could be plagued very easily, though she did not quite dare to at first, in view of his impressive years and experience.
But once goaded to it, she was astonished to find how suddenly it seemed to readjust their personal relations—years and experience falling from his shoulders like a cloak which had concealed a man very nearly her own age; years and experience adding themselves to her, and at least an inch to her stature to redress the balance between them.