"This is most gracious of you, fair lady, to let me come so soon!" he murmured ecstatically, over the rosy brown tips of her slim fingers. "Did the other men but know of it, I should have feared for my life to come without a guard!"
Barbara smiled faintly, willing to appreciate his flatteries, but in no mood for badinage and quip.
"Nay, sir!" she answered, "do not lay it to my graciousness, which is scant to even so charming a gentleman as Mr. Waite, but to my curiosity, which I acknowledge to be great and insistent. Tell me this wonderful thing you promised to tell me!"
Jerry Waite assumed an air of mock supplication.
"I implore you, dear lady, suffer me for one moment to delude myself with the ravishing dream that 'twas for my company, no less than for my story, that you permitted me to come.— What, no, not for one moment the sweet delusion?"
Barbara shook her head resolutely.
"No, first deserve favour, before you presume to claim it, sir!" she retorted. "Earn my grace by a story as interesting as you have led me to expect. Then, perhaps, I may like you well enough to let you stay awhile, for the sake of your company!"
"So be it, if so the queen decrees!" said Waite. "My little story is about a duel, of which, as I gathered last night, the fairest but—pardon me—not always the most gracious of her sex knows a little, but not the most interesting details!"
"I have heard too much already of this duel!" interrupted Barbara. "I do not understand how it concerns me!"
"Oh, lady, this impatience of yours!" said Waite, watching her keenly. "How can you expect to understand the manner in which it concerns you, if you will not let any one tell you the story? I stand pledged to make the story interesting on pain of forfeiting your good will!"