“I am not changed at all,” replied the girl, still chafing at the recollection of that scrutinizing eye, which she perhaps felt the more, because conscious that her own reply had not been perfectly sincere. “But I do not allow your right to pry meanly into my secret thoughts, or to catechise me concerning my words, or to accuse me of falsehood, when I answer you.” “Accuse you of falsehood, Theresa! Who ever dreamed of doing so?” “Your eye did so, sir,” she replied. “When I told you that I was determined ‘not to believe that you were angry with me,’ you fixed your glance upon me with the expression of a pedagogue, who having caught a child lying would terrify it into truth. I am no child, I assure you, Durzil, nor are you _yet_ my master. Think as you may about it.” It was now Durzil’s turn to be confused, for he could not deny that she had construed the meaning of his look aright; and would not, so proud was he and so resolute, either deny or apologize for what was certainly an act of rudeness. After a moment’s pause, however, he looked up at her from under downcast eyelids, with a look of defiance mingled with distrust, and answered bluntly, “I do not believe that _was_ your meaning, or that you were thinking about me at all.” “And what if it were not? Am I bound, I pray you, to be thinking of nothing but you? I must have little enough to think of, if it were so.” “You might at least have told me so much frankly.” “I thank you, cousin Durzil,” she made answer, more proudly, more firmly than ever he had heard her speak before. “I thank you, for teaching me a lesson, though neither very kindly, nor exactly as a generous gentleman should teach a lady. But you are perfectly correct in your surmises, sir. I was _not_ thinking of you at all; no more, sir, than if you were not in existence, and if I answered you, as I did, sir, _falsely_—yes! _falsely_ is the word!—it is because, in the first place, you had no right to ask me the question you did, and, in the second, because I did not choose to answer it! Now, cousin, allow _me_ to teach you something—for you have something yet to learn, wise as you are, about us women. If you ask a lady unmannerly questions, hereafter, and she turn them off by a flippant joke, or an unmeaning _falsehood_, understand that _you_ have been very rude, and that she does not wish to be so likewise, by rebuking your impertinence. Now, do you comprehend me?”