“You just hate me, don’t you?” It was a mere statement which couldn’t have been more impersonal to himself if he had been made of wood. “That’s all right. I seem like a low-down intruder to you. Well, that’s all right, too. But what _ain’t_ all right is what your mother has set you on to thinking about me. You’d never have thought it yourself. You’d have known better.” “What,” she said fiercely, “is that?” “That I’m mutt enough to have a mash on you.” The common slangy crassness of it was a kind of shock. She caught her breath and merely stared at him. But he was not staring at her; he was simply looking straight into her face, and it amazingly flashed upon her that the extraordinary words were so entirely unembarrassed and direct that they were actually not offensive. He was merely telling her something in his own way, not caring the least about his own effect, but absolutely determined that she should hear and understand it. Her caught breath ended in something which was like a half-laugh. His queer, sharp, incomprehensible face, his queer, unmoved voice, were too extraordinarily unlike anything she had ever seen or heard before. “I don’t want to be brash, and what I want to say may seem kind of that way to you; but it ain’t. Anyhow, I guess it’ll relieve your mind. Lady Joan, you’re a looker--you’re a beaut from Beautsville. If I were your kind, and things were different, I’d be crazy about you--crazy. But I’m _not_ your kind--and things _are_ different.” He drew a step nearer still to her in his intentness. “They’re _this_ different: why, Lady Joan, I’m dead stuck on another girl!” She caught her breath again, leaning forward. “Another--” “She says she’s not a lady; she threw me down just because all this darned money came to me,” he hastened on, and suddenly he was imperturbable no longer, but flushed and boyish, and more of New York than ever. “She’s a little bit of a quiet thing, and she drops her h’s; but gee! You’re a looker--you’re a queen, and she’s not. But little Ann Hutchinson--Why, Lady Joan, as far as this boy’s concerned,”--and he oddly touched himself on the breast,--“she makes you look like thirty cents.” Joan quickly sat down on the chair she had just left. She rested an elbow on the table and shaded her face with her hand. She was not laughing; she scarcely knew what she was doing or feeling. “You are in love with Ann Hutchinson,” she said, in a low voice. “Am I?” he answered hotly. “Well, I should smile!” He disdained to say more.