The young lady spoke first. “Mr. Goldenheart,” she said, with the coldest possible politeness, “perhaps you will be good enough to explain what this means?” She turned back into the dining-room. Amelius followed her in silence. “Here I am, in another scrape with a woman!” he thought to himself. “Are men in general as unlucky as I am, I wonder?” “You needn’t close the door,” said Regina maliciously. “Everybody in the house is welcome to hear what _I_ have to say to you.” Amelius made a mistake at the outset--he tried what a little humility would do to help him. There is probably no instance on record in which humility on the part of a man has ever really found its way to the indulgence of an irritated woman. The best and the worst of them alike have at least one virtue in common--they secretly despise a man who is not bold enough to defend himself when they are angry with him. “I hope I have not offended you?” Amelius ventured to say. She tossed her head contemptuously. “Oh dear, no! I am not offended. Only a little surprised at your being so very ready to oblige my aunt.” In the short experience of her which had fallen to the lot of Amelius, she had never looked so charmingly as she looked now. The nervous irritability under which she was suffering brightened her face with the animation which was wanting in it at ordinary times. Her soft brown eyes sparkled; her smooth dusky cheeks glowed with a warm red flush; her tall supple figure asserted its full dignity, robed in a superb dress of silken purple and black lace, which set off her personal attractions to the utmost advantage. She not only roused the admiration of Amelius--she unconsciously gave him back the self-possession which he had, for the moment, completely lost. He was man enough to feel the humiliation of being despised by the one woman in the world whose love he longed to win; and he answered with a sudden firmness of tone and look that startled her. “You had better speak more plainly still, Miss Regina,” he said. “You may as well blame me at once for the misfortune of being a man.” She drew back a step. “I don’t understand you,” she answered. “Do I owe no forbearance to a woman who asks a favour of me?” Amelius went on. “If a man had asked me to steal into the house on tiptoe, I should have said--well! I should have said something I had better not repeat. If a man had stood between me and the door when you came back, I should have taken him by the collar and pulled him out of my way. Could I do that, if you please, with Mrs. Farnaby?” Regina saw the weak point of this defence with a woman’s quickness of perception. “I can’t offer any opinion,” she said; “especially when you lay all the blame on my aunt.” Amelius opened his lips to protest--and thought better of it. He wisely went straight on with what he had still to say.