Tommy’s mouth opened twice before any words could come out.  “Take care!” he cried.

“Of what?” said she, curling her lip.

He begged her pardon.  “You don’t like me, Lady Pippinworth,” he said, watching himself, “and I don’t wonder at it; and you have discovered a way of hurting me of which you make rather unmerciful use.  Well, I don’t wonder at that, either.  If I am—­stoutish, I have at least the satisfaction of knowing that it gives you entertainment, and I owe you that amend and more.”  He was really in a fury, and burning to go on—­“For I did have the whip-hand of you once, madam,” etc., etc.; but by a fine effort he held his rage a prisoner, and the admiration of himself that this engendered lifted him into the sublime.

“For I so far forgot myself,” said Tommy, in a glow, “as to try to make you love me.  You were beautiful and cold; no man had ever stirred you; my one excuse is that to be loved by such as you was no small ambition; my fitting punishment is that I failed.”  He knew he had not failed, and so could be magnanimous.  “I failed utterly,” he said, with grandeur.  “You were laughing at me all the time; if proof of it were needed, you have given it now by coming here to mock me.  I thought I was stronger than you, but I was ludicrously mistaken, and you taught me a lesson I richly deserved; you did me good, and I thank you for it.  Believe me, Lady Pippinworth, when I say that I admit my discomfiture, and remain your very humble and humbled servant.”

Now was not that good of Tommy?  You would think it still better were I to tell you what part of his person she was looking at while he said it.

He held out his hand generously (there was no noble act he could not have performed for her just now), but, whatever her Ladyship wanted, it was not to say good-bye.  “Do you mean that you never cared for me?” she asked, with the tremor that always made Tommy kind.

“Never cared for you!” he exclaimed fervently.  “What were you not to me in those golden days!” It was really a magnanimous cry, meant to help her self-respect, nothing more; but it alarmed the good in him, and he said sternly:  “But of course that is all over now.  It is only a sweet memory,” he added, to make these two remarks mix.

The sentiment of this was so agreeable to him that he was half thinking of raising her hand chivalrously to his lips when Lady Pippinworth said: 

“But if it is all over now, why have you still to walk me off?”

“Have you never had to walk me off?” said Tommy, forgetting himself, and, to his surprise, she answered, “Yes.”

“But this meeting has cured me,” she said, with dangerous graciousness.

“Dear Lady Pippinworth,” replied Tommy, ardently, thinking that his generosity had touched her, “if anything I have said——­”

“It is not so much what you have said,” she answered, and again she looked at the wrong part of him.