"It is all a fairy tale!" laughed Richard Maynadier, "this wonderful story of pirates, and ransom, and their chief being in manners a gentleman, bowing and scraping as though he were doing the minuet. I do not believe a word of it." "No one asked you to believe it!" retorted Miss Marbury, with a toss of her head, "and, what is more, no one cares whether you do or whether you do not." "You said that as if you meant it," said Maynadier with an amused smile, "and you said it very prettily, Judith,--but can you assume to answer for all your party?" "You know perfectly well that 'no one' is equivalent to I," she answered, with another toss. "Then I is equivalent to no one, and no one comprehends any one, and any one comprehends every one, and every one----" "Dick!" she cried: "Stop it! stop it!" "Stop what?" "Winding yourself into a ball." "I thought I was deducing a fact." "Well, stop it! Besides, I do not care for the fact--and neither do I care for you, sir." "Is _that_ a fact?" he asked. "It is," she answered. "Very much a fact." "Are you sure--quite sure?" She shrugged her shoulders. "Because, if you are----" "Yes?" she inflected. "I will be obliged to----" "You will be obliged to what?" "To modify my opinion of----" "Your opinion does not concern me," she said indifferently. "So, I assumed; but, nevertheless, I modify it in regard to the pirates. I accept everything you tell, absolutely--the pirate chief and all his mannerisms, included.--Now, do you care for me?" "You are sincere--you believe it, every word?" "Every word," he averred. "Well, in that event, I may care for you to-morrow." "And to-day--this evening?" She shook her head. "No--you must pay penalty for a little while. I am going to give this evening to Sir Edward Parkington," she said, as he swung her out of the saddle, and added: "He, I know, cares." Then ran hurriedly up the steps, and into the house. Richard Maynadier hastily turned the horses over to a groom, and made to follow her, reconsidered, and went on to the library. This was a new twist in her character, savoring more of the spoiled beauty, than of the equal-tempered Judith he had known. And he was not so sure that he did not like it. She had the beauty to justify it, the poise to make it alluring--and the wealth to make it permissible, even if she had neither of the other two. "I might almost, if I were a younger man," he reflected, "think she was trying to make a fool of me, or else was in love with me. But, as I can not think either, she must just be trying her hand on the old friend, who will not misunderstand. Sir Edward Parkington!--'he, I know, cares!' Well, my lady, do not presume with him too far. He is one, I fancy, who is apt to take whatever comes his way."