Now Jean Jacques flushed, and he did hesitate in his reply. He hated
irony in anyone else, though he loved it in himself, when heaven gave him
inspiration thereto. He was in a state of tension, and was ready to
break out, to be a force let loose--that is the way he would have
expressed it; and he was faced by a new spirit in his daughter which
would surely spring the mine, unless he secured peace by strategy. He
had sense enough to feel the danger.

He did not see, however, any course for diplomacy here, for she had given
him his cue in her last words. As a pure logician he was bound to take
it, though it might lead to drama of a kind painful to them both.

"It is not good enough for the Manor Cartier that you go falling in love
with a nobody from nowhere," he responded.

"I am not falling in love," she rejoined.

"What did you mean, then, by looking at him as you did; by whispering
together; by letting him hold your hand when he left, and him looking at
you as though he'd eat you up--without sugar!"

"I said I was not falling in love," she persisted, quietly, but with
characteristic boldness. "I am in love."

"You are in love with him--with that interloper! Heaven of heavens, do
you speak the truth? Answer me, Zoe Barbille."

She bridled. "Certainly I will answer. Did you think I would let a man
look at me as he did, that I would look at a man as I looked at him, that
I would let him hold my hand as I did, if I did not love him? Have you