It wasn't quite the thing." "Still, you felt just a little hurt, and that I could respect a confidence ?" Ida looked at him as if she expected an answer, and it occurred to Weston that she was very alluring in her long white dress, though the same thought had been uppermost in his mind for the last half-hour.
"Yes," he admitted, "I suppose that was it." He could have answered more explicitly, but he felt that it would not be safe, for it seemed very probable that if he once gave his feelings rein they would run away with him; and this attitude, as the girl naturally had noticed on other occasions, tended to make their conversation somewhat difficult.
"What are you going to do about one very tactfully-worded suggestion ?" she asked.
"You mean the hint that I should make a few shares in the Grenfell Consolidated over to my English relatives?
After all, considering everything, it's not an unnatural request.

I shall endeavor to fall in with it." Ida's face did not soften.

The man was her lover, for, though he had not declared himself, she was quite aware of that, and she was his partisan and very jealous of his credit.

It was difficult to forgive those who had injured him, and these people in England had shown him scant consideration, and had spoken of him slightingly to her, a stranger.

He noticed her expression and changed the subject.
"I have fancied now and then that you must have said something remarkably in my favor that day at Scarthwaite," he said.