"I'm sorry," she said with trembling lips. "You won't be troubled again."
"If you were sorry, you wouldn't try to be dramatic. Your 'curtain,' like your repentance, is only the latest form of the Baltimore crab-flake—a new emotion, a new indulgence.... Look here, I shall be gone before you're up to-morrow; won't you part friends?"
He crossed the hall with a smile and held out his hand without fear of a rebuff. She looked at him and had to confess herself at fault. His heavy overcoat was hanging open, and in his knee-breeches and pink coat he looked slim and boyish; he was a booby at dinner and a clod at the ball; outside his own profession he had no more knowledge or ideas than a schoolboy. Yet she submitted to his criticism almost in silence.
"Won't you part friends?" he repeated.
Lady Barbara could not let him ride off so complacently. She pressed one hand to her side and groped her way to the table; as she leaned against it, the friendliness died out of his smile.
"I shouldn't do that again, if I were you," he counselled, reverting to his slightly nasal drawl; and this time she could have cried without feigning, for she was tired and humiliated by her consistent failure.
"I am ill," she protested. "Needless to say, you don't believe——"
"My dear Lady Barbara, the worst of taking people in by lies is that afterwards they refuse to be taken in by the truth. That always means a dreadful muddle for everybody."
There was no trace of anger in the indolent voice; a lazy, superficial smile played still over the composed face, but she felt that she had touched his vanity, which was so petty that he could allow no one even to chaff him.