"Ah!" he said, impatiently. "It's not what one gives or says to a woman, as you know. It's the _manner_----" There was real merriment in Olwen's laugh at this. "The manner! The _manner_! Well, really! After the scolding and strafing and disapproving! After the way you never came near me if we were out----" "I did. I did. I sat next you at that concert when Jack Awdas's girl was singing." "For five minutes; yes, I remember," said Olwen, tilting her chin. "It was the one and only time." "It was not, pardon me. I was coming to sit by you at Mrs. Cartwright's party, and I wasn't allowed a look in----" "So you had a look _at_, most severely," Olwen countered. "At Mrs. Cartwright's was when you were the horridest of all. You just sat opposite to me and glared----" * * * * * In the dining-room the party of Olwen's relations sat over their last half-cups of tea in a simmer of delighted curiosity. This was shared, openly, by the hireling colt from the mountains as she clattered in at intervals with hot water or more butter. Breathlessly she asked at last, "Will I take a tray and some fresh tea into the drawing-room for Miss S'Olwen and that t'officer?" "You will not," ordered her mistress. Even she had been young once. "----Yes! glared at me as if you hated the sight of me!" insisted Olwen. He said, "And weren't you flirrrting with those two fellows, and simply out to make me wild?" "No," said the girl, quietly and sincerely. He could have clasped her for it. "Darling!" said his glance, but aloud he only retorted, "Maybe you were not out to do it, but you certainly pulled it off." "As for _you_," continued Olwen, "weren't you talking at me to Mrs. Cartwright all the time at dinner?" "No!" he retorted, flagrantly. "You know you were! _All_ about Woman being the Plaything of Man!" "Don't rub it in," he entreated, with another glance down at this plaything so maddeningly near, yet not, perhaps, for him. Yes! If she had had the boldness of the kitten who strikes with soft paws at the Force which could annihilate her, he had the boding patience of that big dog who waits, sitting up, with the lump of sugar on his nose. It was she who kept him so.... She was--oh, she was getting her own back now! She broke off as if by the way, to ask him, "Let me see, what was the first thing--almost the first I ever heard you say.... _What_ sort of a judge of women are you?" It is not true that the Scot is inevitably without a sense of humour. At that moment Fergus Ross saw even the joke against himself, since he thought it would appeal to her. He responded, "What was that about women? Something I've hairred in a drim?" Relentless, Olwen repeated her demand. "What sort of a judge of women are you?" He looked at her, threw up and shook his head with the action of a boxer who drops his hands as well.