"Arthur would have said, before he'd thought of it, 'You damn fool--!' And then he would have apologised for forgetting himself in the presence of a lady," she said, in a sorry little voice. "Yes, you--you _have_ hurt me," she presently continued,--"just as you meant to do, if that's a comfort to you. I feel as though I'd smacked a marble statue. You are the sort that used to take snuff just before they had their heads cut off, and when _they_ were in the wrong. And I'm not. That's always been the trouble." "Elena!" I began,--"wait, just a moment! I'm in anger now--!" It was not much to stammer out, but for me, who have the Townsend temper, it was very hard to say. "You talk about loving me! and I believe you do love me, in at any rate a sort of way. But you'll never forget, you never _have_ forgotten, those ancestors of yours who were in the House of Burgesses when I hadn't any ancestors at all. It isn't fair, because we haven't got the chance to pick our parents, and it's absurd, and--it's true. The woman is my mother, and I'll be like her some day, very probably. Yes, she _is_ ignorant and tacky, and at times she is ridiculous. She hadn't even the smartness to notice it when you made a fool of her; and if anybody were to explain it to her she would just laugh and say, 'Law, I don't mind, because young people always have to have their fun, I reckon.' And she would forgive you! Why, she adores you! she's been telling me for months that you're 'a heap the nicest young man that visits with me.'" Afterward Elena paused for an instant. "I think that is all," she said. "It's a difference that isn't curable. Yes, I simply wanted to tell you that much, and then ask you to go, I believe--" "So you don't wish me, Elena, in the venerable phrase, to make an honest woman of you?" She had half turned, standing, in pink and silver fripperies, with one bared arm resting on the chair back, in one of her loveliest attitudes. "What do you mean?" "I was referring to what happened the other night, after the Allardyce dance." And Elena smiled rather strangely. "You baby! how much would it shock you if I told you no woman really minds about that either? Any way, you have broken your solemn promise," she said, with indignation. "Ah, but perfidy seemed, somehow, in tone with an establishment wherein one concludes the evening's entertainment by physical assault upon the guests. Frankly, my dear"--I observed, with my most patronizing languor, --"your breeding is not quite that to which I have been accustomed, and I have had a rather startling glimpse of Lena Vokins, with all the laboriously acquired veneering peeling off. Still, in view of everything, I suppose I do owe it to you to marry you, if you insist--" "Insist! I wouldn't wipe my feet on you!"