"
This was not the way it had shaped during dinner, and Tommy would have
acted wisely had he now gone out to cool his head. "If you moved me?"
she repeated interrogatively; but, with the best intentions, he
continued to flounder.
"Believe me," he implored her, "had I known it could be done, I should
have checked myself. But they always insist that you are an iceberg,
and am I so much to blame if that look of hauteur deceived me with the
rest? Oh, dear Lady Disdain," he said warmly, in answer to one of her
most freezing glances, "it deceives me no longer. From that moment I
knew you had a heart, and I was shamed--as noble a heart as ever beat
in woman," he added. He always tended to add generous bits when he
found it coming out well.
"Does the man think I am in love with him?" was Lady Disdain's
inadequate reply.
"No, no, indeed!" he assured her earnestly. "I am not so vain as to
think that, nor so selfish as to wish it; but if for a moment you were
moved----"
"But I was not," said she, stamping her shoe.
His dander began to rise, as they say in the north; but he kept grip
of politeness.
"If you were moved for a moment, Lady Pippinworth," he went on, in a
slightly more determined voice,--"I am far from saying that it was so;
but if----"
"But as I was not----" she said.
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