"At any rate I speak for myself," she said. "I can answer for myself. I
want to be friends."
"In spite of my manners?" He was bitter and defiant still.
"They grow worse every minute; and your morals are no better, I'm told."
"I daresay not," said Quisante with a short laugh.
"Oh, say you won't be friends, if you don't want to! Be simple. There, I
say it again. Be simple."
Lady Richard's merry laugh rang through the garden, and a brusque "Damn
it!" of Morewood's floated out from the open window of the billiard-room.
There was an odd contrast to this cheerful levity in the man's pale drawn
face as he looked into May Gaston's eyes.
"Do you really mean what you say?" he asked. "Or are you only trying to
be kind, to put me at my ease?"
"It's nobody's fault but your own that you're not always at your ease,"
she replied. The rest she let pass; when she asked him to walk with her
she had only been trying to be kind, and she had been fearful of what her
kindness might entail on her. But things went well; he was not flirting
and he was not acting; his manners, if still bad, were just now at least
not borrowed, they were home-grown.
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