Miss Galbraith: “Oh, dear, how provoking! I suppose I must call the porter.” She rises from her seat, but on attempting to move away she finds that the skirt of her polonaise has been caught in the falling window. She pulls at it, and then tries to lift the window again, but the cloth has wedged it in, and she cannot stir it. “Well, I certainly think this is beyond endurance! Porter! Ah,—Porter! Oh, he’ll never hear me in the racket that these wheels are making! I wish they’d stop,—I”—The gentleman stirs in his chair, lifts his head, listens, takes his feet down from the other seat, rises abruptly, and comes to Miss Galbraith’s side.
Mr. Allen Richards: “Will you allow me to open the window for you?” Starting back, “Miss Galbraith!”
Miss Galbraith: “Al— Mr. Richards!” There is a silence for some moments, in which they remain looking at each other; then,—
Mr. Richards: “Lucy”—
Miss Galbraith: “I forbid you to address me in that way, Mr. Richards.”
Mr. Richards: “Why, you were just going to call me Allen!”
Miss Galbraith: “That was an accident, you know very well,—an impulse”—
Mr. Richards: “Well, so is this.”
Miss Galbraith: “Of which you ought to be ashamed to take advantage. I wonder at your presumption in speaking to me at all. It’s quite idle, I can assure you. Everything is at an end between us. It seems that I bore with you too long; but I’m thankful that I had the spirit to not at last, and to act in time. And now that chance has thrown us together, I trust that you will not force your conversation upon me. No gentleman would, and I have always given you credit for thinking yourself a gentleman. I request that you will not speak to me.”
Mr. Richards: “You’ve spoken ten words to me for every one of mine to you. But I won’t annoy you. I can’t believe it, Lucy; I can not believe it. It seems like some rascally dream, and if I had had any sleep since it happened, I should think I—”