"Now you're rude again--only, I forgive you, because you don't know that you are. It's rude to ask such questions--so I'll be polite and refuse to answer. Not that there's any good reason why he shouldn't have asked me to marry him, you know. The fact that you hate him isn't a reason." "But you do, yourself--" "Not at all. At least, I haven't said so. I wish you'd listen to me, Mr. Lawrence, instead of interrupting me with questions every other moment. How in the world am I to make a confession, if you won't let me say two words?" "Are you going to make a confession?" asked Lawrence, incredulously. "It's all chaff, you know!" Fanny turned her cool eyes upon him instantly. "There's a lot besides chaff," she said, in a very different tone. "I can be in earnest, too--when I care." She certainly emphasized the last three words in a way which might have meant much, accompanied as they were by her steady look. Lawrence felt himself growing a little pale again. "Do you care?" he asked, and his voice shook perceptibly. "For Mr. Brinsley?" enquired Fanny, instantly changing her tone again and beginning to laugh. "No--for me." "For you! Oh dear, what a question!" She laughed outright. Lawrence leaned down and knocked the ashes out of his pipe against the toe of his heavy walking-shoe without saying a word. Then he put the pipe into his pocket. She watched him. "You've no right to be angry this time," she said. "But you are." The young man faced her quietly and waited a moment before he spoke. "You're playing with me," he said, calmly and without emphasis, as stating a fact. "Of course I am!" laughed Fanny Trehearne. "What did you expect? But I'm sorry that you've found it out," she added, with appalling cynicism. "It won't be fun any more." "Unless we both play," suggested Lawrence, who had either recovered his temper very quickly, or possessed a better control over it than Fanny had supposed. "All right!" she exclaimed cheerfully. "Let's play--let us play. That sounds solemn, somehow--I wonder why? Oh--of course--it's like 'Let us pray' in church." Lawrence laughed drily. "Let us pray beforehand, for the one who gets the worst of it," he said. "He or she will need it. But I shall win at the game, you know. That's a foregone conclusion." Fanny was surprised and amused at the confidence he suddenly affected--very unlike his habitual modesty and self-effacement. "You seem pretty sure of yourself," she answered. "What shall the forfeit be, as they say in the children's games?" "To marry or not to marry, at the discretion of the winner. I think that's fair, don't you? I shouldn't like to propose anything serious--the head of Roger Brinsley in a charger, for instance." Fanny laughed again. "Yes, it's all very well!" she protested. "But of course the one who loses will be in earnest, and the one who wins will not." "He may be, by that time," suggested Lawrence.