"No? But, really, you know, you act that way." I saw she was getting all the best of it--and, in my opinion, that would kill what little chance a man might have with a girl. I set deliberately about breaking through that crust of composure, if I did nothing more. "That depends on the view-point," I grinned. "Would you think it funny if I carried you off--really, you know--and--er--married you and made you live happy--" "You seem to insist upon the happy part of it, which is not at all--" "Necessary?" I hinted. "Plausible," she supplied sweetly. "But would you think it funny, if I did?" She regarded her broken pencil ruefully--or pretended to--and pinched her brows together in deep meditation. Oh, she was the most maddening bit of young womanhood--But, there, no Barney for me. "I--might," she decided at last. "It _would_ be rather droll, you know, and I wonder how you'd manage it; I'm not very tiny, and I rather think it wouldn't be easy to--er--carry me off. Would you wear a mask--a black velvet mask? I should insist upon black velvet. And would you say: 'Gadzooks, madam! I command you not to scream!' Would you?" She leaned toward me, and her eyes--well, for downright torture, women are at times perfectly fiendish. I caught her hand, and I held it, too, in spite of her. That far I was master. "No," I told her grimly. "If I saw that you were going to do anything so foolish as to scream, I should just kiss you, and--kiss you till you were glad to be sensible about it." Well, she tried first to look calmly amused; then she tried to look insulted, and to freeze me into sanity. She ended, however, by looking a good bit confused, and by blushing scarlet. I had won that far. I kept her hand held tight in mine; I could feel it squirm to get away, and it felt--oh, thunder! "Let's play something else," she said, after a long minute. "I--I never did admire highwaymen particularly, and I must go home." "No, you mustn't," I contradicted. "You must--" She looked at me with those wonderful, heavy-lashed eyes, and her lips had a little quiver as if--Oh, I don't know, but I let go her hand, and I felt like a great, hulking brute that had been teasing a child till it cried. "All right," I sighed, "I'll let you go this time. But I warn you, little girl. If--no, _when_ I find you out from King's Highway by yourself again, that kidnaping is sure going to come off. The Lord intended you to be Mrs. Ellis Carleton. And forty feuds and forty fathers can't prevent it. I don't believe in going against the decrees of Providence; a _wise_ Providence." She bit her lip at the corner. "You must have a little private Providence of your own," she retorted, with something like her old assurance. "I'm sure mine never hinted at such a--a fate for me. And one feud is as good as forty, Mr. Carleton. If you are anything like your father, I can easily understand how the feud began. The Kings and the Carletons are fond of their own way."