"Oh, I didn't _say_ anything? I just looked an invitation, I suppose?" she stormed. "Melting eyes--and that sort of thing? Tears in them, maybe? Poor girl! Poor little child! It would be cruel to let her go home without seeing me again. I will give her a little more happiness, poor thing, and write to her a while. Maybe it would be wiser, though, just to make a quarrel and break loose at once. She'll get over it in a little while after she gets back to New York. Well! Upon my word!" As she advanced these horrible suppositions, Miss Hoffman had marked out a short beat of garden path--five steps and a turn; five steps back and whirl again--with, on the whole, a caged-tigress effect. With a double-quick at each turn to keep his place at her elbow, Jeff, utterly aghast at the damnable perversity of everything on earth, vainly endeavored to make coordinate and stumbling remonstrance. As she stopped for breath, Jeff heard his own voice at last, propounding to the world at large a stunned query as to whether the abode of lost spirits could afford aught to excel the present situation. The remark struck him: he paused to wonder what other things he had been saying. Miss Ellinor walked her beat, vindictive. Her chin was at an angle of complacency. She turned up the perky corners of an imaginary mustache with an air, an exasperating little finger, separated from the others, pointing upward in hateful self-satisfaction. Her mouth wore a gratified masculine smirk, visible even in the starlight; her gait was a leisured and lordly strut; her hand waved airy pity. Jeff shrank back in horror. "M-Miss Hoffman, I n-never d-dreamed----" Miss Hoffman turned upon him swiftly. "Never have I heard anything like it--never! You bring me out here willy-nilly, and by way of entertainment you virtually accuse me of throwing myself at your head." "I never!" said Jeff indignantly. "I didn't----" Miss Hoffman faced him crouchingly and shook an indictment from her fingers. "First, you imply that I enticed you to come; second, expecting you, I dressed to catch your eye; third, I was watching eagerly for you----" "Come--I say now!" The baited and exasperated victim walked headlong into the trap. "The first thing you did was to ask me if I was lame? Wasn't that question meant to find out who I was? When I answered, 'Not--very,' didn't you know at once that it was me?"