"Ready to shake hands, now?"

"Oh, yes."

"Mentally, as well as physically?"

The white teeth showed in a smile of comprehension.

"I--guess so! I never was one to harbour animosity."

"I am glad of that! You bade me such a frigid good-bye on Thursday
afternoon that I was afraid you had taken a violent dislike to me."

"My stars and stripes, that's pretty calm! What about _you_, I beg to
ask?" Cornelia rolled indignant eyes to the hanging lamp. "I didn't
hev to think; I _heard_ from your own lips what you thought about _me_!
I couldn't rest easy in my bed, for fear you went home and did away with
Mr Greville, for making you drive me home. I never supposed I should
live to endoor the degradation of having a man do things for me against
his will, but I had to come to England to find my mistake. And then you
sit there and accuse me of disliking you!--Well!!!"

Guest flushed with embarrassment; with something deeper than
embarrassment; with honest shame. He clasped his hands between his
knees, and bent forward eagerly.

"You are quite right, Miss Briskett, there is no excuse for me. I
behaved like a cad. Things got me on the raw, somehow. I imagined--all
sorts of things which weren't true! That's no excuse, I know. I should
have controlled myself better. But if I was annoyed at starting on that
drive, I was far more so when it came to an end. You had your revenge!
And you don't deny that you disliked me in return."

"I did so! I did heaps more than that. I thought you just the
hatefullest person I'd ever met."

"And now?"

Cornelia laughed easily.

"Oh, well--we've had a pretty good time together, haven't we? We can
let bygones be bygones. You're English--vurry, vurry English, but I
guess you're nice!"

"What do you mean by English?" But even as he put the question Captain
Guest straightened himself, and reared his neck within his stiff,
upstanding collar, with that air of ineffable superiority which marks
the Englishman in his intercourse with "inferior" nations. Cornelia
laughed, a full-throated ha-ha of amusement.

"It's `English'! There's no other word to it. You are about as English
at this moment as you've been in the whole of your life.--I guess we
must be getting pretty near London now, for I ken see nothing but
smoke."

"Yes, we are nearly there. Will you--may I call at your hotel some day,
on the chance of finding you in?"

"Why, suttenly! I'd love to have you. Yo