“Not really?” He had turned abruptly and in his eyes there was a curious expression, almost of alarm.  “How extraordinary, — how perfectly extraordinary!”

“Why extraordinary?” That her cup of humiliation might brim to the full, resentment was added to confusion.  “You consider me unworthy, then, of having had nobility among my ancestry?  But, just the same, there was nothing strange about it.  The colonies were chiefly English, you remember!” He smiled at her sarcasm.  “The duke married one of Elizabeth’s ladies-in-waiting after he went home and there was a younger son, and he had a younger son, and after a long time one of them came over to Virginia just like anybody else.  They have always been good, loyal, highly respected American citizens,” she told him fiercely, “and I’m proud of them!  Besides — " with reckless emphasis, “I’ve always felt so sorry for Wildenai.”

But at this point, quite incomprehensibly, Blair broke into peals of laughter.

“And by and by, after a long, long time, one of these good, loyal, American citizens that we’re both so proud of had a hot-tempered, most disloyal little daughter who intends to show her employer his proper place before she dismisses him!  But why are you sorry for Wildenai?”

With mischievous eyes he searched her face.

She flushed, then, looking squarely at him, “Because she was impulsive like me, and just for that reason Lord Harold ran away and left her,” she said.  “He’s the only one of them I never had any use for.”

Blair wandered the length of the cavern and back before he replied.

“You think him a coward, I suppose.”  He still looked as though he wanted to laugh, yet something in his tone seared her outraged pride.  He might as well have touched an iron to quivering flesh.  “You ought to remember, however, — I mean every woman ought to remember, — that when a girl lets a man know that she cares for him she generally forfeits, then and there, whatever interest she may have had for him.  Wildenai risked too much.  Of course, in her case there was some excuse.  She was only an untrained barbarian.  But, under ordinary circumstances, I tell you there’s nothing a man despises so much!”

What was done or said after that Miss Hastings never could have told.  She was possessed of but one desire, — to get away, to go back to the hotel, — home, anywhere beyond the reach of his voice and his eyes.  For the moment she hated him, and although Blair, conscience smitten at he knew not what, waited in the lobby a full hour before going in to dinner, she did not come down.

Up in her room, mechanically brushing her hair for the night, Miss Hastings stormily addressed the girl in the glass who stared so scornfully back at her.

“I tell you I don’t care a thing about it!  He probably thought he was justified in every word he said.  He’s probably smiling this very minute because he thinks he managed it so well!  But he’s a coward just the same, and I despise him, — I do despise him!” Her eyes brimming with tears, she fiercely repeated the word.  “Well, he’ll soon find out how much I really meant!”