His voice dropped and was rather unsteady. The fool, the gross, brutal, vulgar, hopeless fool! He thought this was the way to approach her, to lead her to listen to his proposal of marriage! Not for a second did she guess that they were talking at cross purposes. She did not know that as he kept himself steady under her contemptuousness he was thinking that Ann would have to own that he had been up against it hard and plenty while the thing was going on. “I'm always up against it when I'm talking to you,” he said. “You get me rattled. There's things I want to talk about and ask you. Suppose you give me a chance, and let us start out by being sort of friends.” “I am staying in your house,” she answered in a deadly voice, “and I cannot go away because my mother will not let me. You can force yourself upon me, if you choose, because I cannot help it; but understand once for all that I will not give you your ridiculous chance. And I will not utter one word to you when I can avoid it.” He was silent for a moment and seemed to be thinking rather deeply. She realized now that he saw the nearing dog-cart. “You won't. Then it's up to me,” he said. Then with a change of tone, he added, “I'll stop the cart and tell the man to drive you to the house. I'm not going to force myself on you, as you call it. It'd be no use. Perhaps it'll come all right in the end.” He made a sign to the groom, who hastened his horse's pace and drew up when he reached them. “Take this lady back to the house,” he said. The groom, who was a new arrival, began to prepare to get down and give up his place. “You needn't do that,” said Tembarom. “Won't you get up and take the reins, sir?” the man asked uncertainly. “No. I can't drive. You'll have to do it. I'll walk.” And to the groom's amazement, they left him standing under the trees looking after them. “It's up to me,” he was saying. “The whole durned thing's up to me.” CHAPTER XXVI The neighborhood of Temple Barholm was not, upon the whole, a brilliant one. Indeed, it had been frankly designated by the casual guest as dull. The country was beautiful enough, and several rather large estates lay within reach of one another, but their owners were neither very rich nor especially notable personages. They were of extremely good old blood, and were of established respectability. None of them, however, was given to entertaining house parties made up of the smart and dazzlingly sinful world of fashion said by moralists to be composed entirely of young and mature beauties, male and female, capable of supplying at any moment enlivening detail for the divorce court--glittering beings whose wardrobes were astonishing and whose conversations were composed wholly of brilliant paradox and sparkling repartee.