The Fighting Chance

She dropped one arm on the back of his chair and rested her chin on it, staring at space across his shoulders.

"That's how it had to be, you see, when I found that I cared for you. There was nothing to do but to tell him. I was quite certain that it was all off; but I found that I didn't know the man. I knew he was sensitive, but I didn't know he was sensitive to personal ridicule only, and to nothing else in all the world that I can discover. I--I suppose, from my frankness to him, he has concluded that no ridicule could ever touch him through me. I mean, he trusts me enough to marry me. … He will be safe enough, as far as my personal conduct is concerned," she added naively. "It seems that I am capable of love; but I am incapable of its degradation."

Siward, leaning heavily forward over his desk, rested his head in both hands; and she stooped from her perch on the arm of the chair, pressing her hot cheeks against his hands--a moment only; then slipping to her feet, she curled up in a great arm-chair by the fire, head tipped back, blue gaze concentrated on him.

"The thing for you to do," she said, "is to ambush me some night, and throw me into a hansom, and drive us both to the parson's. I'd hate you for it as much as I'd love you, but I'd make you an interesting wife."

"I may do that yet," he said, lifting his head from his hands.

"You've a year to do it in," she observed. … "By the way, you're to take me in to dinner, as you did the first night. Do you remember? I asked Grace Ferrall then. I asked her again to-day. Heigho! It was years ago, wasn't it, that I drove up to the station and saw a very attractive and perplexed young man looking anxiously about for somebody to take him to Shotover. Ahem! the notorious Mr. Siward! Dear, … I didn't mean to hurt you! You know it, silly! Mayn't I have my little joke about your badness--your redoubtable badness of reputation? There! You had just better smile. … How dare you frighten me by making me think I had hurt you! … Besides, you are probably unrepentant."

She watched him closely for a moment or two, then, "Are you unrepentant?"

"About what?"

"About your general wickedness? About--" she hesitated--"about that girl, for example."

"What girl?" he asked coldly.

"That reminds me that you have told me absolutely nothing about her."

"There is nothing to tell," he said, in a tone so utterly new to her in its finality that she sat up as though listening to an unknown voice.