‘Why do you compromise me thus, sir?’

These astounding words were spoken out of the hearing of the Conley girls.

‘Compromise you!’ muttered Harry.

Masterly was the skill with which the Countess contrived to speak angrily and as an injured woman, while she wore an indifferent social countenance.

’I repeat, compromise me.  No, Mr. Harry Jocelyn, you are not the jackanapes you try to make people think you:  you understand me.’

The Countess might accuse him, but Harry never had the ambition to make people think him that:  his natural tendency was the reverse:  and he objected to the application of the word jackanapes to himself, and was ready to contest the fact of people having that opinion at all.  However, all he did was to repeat:  ‘Compromise!’

‘Is not open unkindness to me compromising me?’

‘How?’ asked Harry.

’Would you dare to do it to a strange lady?  Would you have the impudence to attempt it with any woman here but me?  No, I am innocent; it is my consolation; I have resisted you, but you by this cowardly behaviour place me—­and my reputation, which is more—­at your mercy.  Noble behaviour, Mr. Harry Jocelyn!  I shall remember my young English gentleman.’

The view was totally new to Harry.

‘I really had no idea of compromising you,’ he said.  ’Upon my honour, I can’t see how I did it now!’

’Oblige me by walking less in the neighbourhood of those fat-faced glaring farm-girls,’ the Countess spoke under her breath; ’and don’t look as if you were being whipped.  The art of it is evident—­you are but carrying on the game.—­Listen.  If you permit yourself to exhibit an unkindness to me, you show to any man who is a judge, and to every woman, that there has been something between us.  You know my innocence—­yes! but you must punish me for having resisted you thus long.’

Harry swore he never had such an idea, and was much too much of a man and a gentleman to behave in that way.—­And yet it seemed wonderfully clever!  And here was the Countess saying: 

’Take your reward, Mr. Harry Jocelyn.  You have succeeded; I am your humble slave.  I come to you and sue for peace.  To save my reputation I endanger myself.  This is generous of you.’

‘Am I such a clever fellow?’ thought the young gentleman.  ’Deuced lucky with women’:  he knew that:  still a fellow must be wonderfully, miraculously, clever to be able to twist and spin about such a woman as this in that way.  He did not object to conceive that he was the fellow to do it.  Besides, here was the Countess de Saldar-worth five hundred of the Conley girls—­almost at his feet!

Mollified, he said:  ‘Now, didn’t you begin it?’

‘Evasion!’ was the answer.  ’It would be such pleasure to you so see a proud woman weep!  And if yesterday, persecuted as I am, with dreadful falsehoods abroad respecting me and mine, if yesterday I did seem cold to your great merits, is it generous of you to take this revenge?’