o extremely horrid and that you went home and
drenched a number of pillows with your tears.'

He laughed lightly. Margaret was silent for a moment, but she slowly
nodded and drummed a five-fingered exercise on her knee with her right
hand.

'I cried like a baby,' she said suddenly, with a little snort of
dissatisfaction.

'Not really?' Lushington was profoundly surprised, before he was
flattered.

'Yes. I hope you're satisfied? Was I not right in saying that you were
revenged?'

'You have more heart than you like to show,' he answered. 'Thank you
for caring so much! It was nice of you.'

'I don't believe it was what you mean by "heart" at all,' said
Margaret. 'I don't pretend to have much, and what there is of it is not
a bit of the "faithful squaw" kind. I cried that night about you,
exactly as I might have cried over a poor lame horse, if somebody had
kicked it uphill and I had been brute enough to laugh at its pain!'

'Hm!' ejaculated Lushington. 'Pity, I suppose?'

'Not a bit of it. How rude you are! I should have pitied you at the
time, then. But I didn't, not the least bit. I laughed at you.
Afterwards I cried because I had been such a beast as to laugh, and I
wished that somebody would come and beat me! I assure you, it was
entirely out of disgust with myself that I cried, and not in the least
out of pity for you!'

'I'm delighted to hear it,' said Lushington. 'In the first place, I
should be sorry to have been the direct means of bringing you to tears;
secondly, I hate to be pitied; and thirdly, it's a much more difficult
thing to make a woman disgusted with herself than it is to excite her
compassion by playing lame horse or sick puppy!'

Margaret looked at him from under the brim of her hat, throwing her
head far back so as to do so. Then they both laughed a little, and
Lushington felt happy for a moment; but Margaret did not know what she
felt, if indeed she felt anything at all, beyond a momentary
satisfaction in the society of a man she really liked very much, whom
she had once believed she loved, and whom she might still have been
willing to marry if she had not been at the point of beginning her
public career, and if he had asked her, and if--but there were
altogether too many conditions, and for the moment matrimony was out of
sight.

'I like you very much,' she said, suddenly thoughtful. 'I've seen you
act like a hero, and you always act like a gentleman. One cannot say
that of many men.