She went steadily on, not deigning an answer.

'But--my charmer, let us parley,' he remonstrated, striving to maintain
a light tone. 'In a minute we shall be in the town and--'

'I thought that we understood one another,' she answered curtly, still
continuing to walk, and to look straight before her; in which position
her hood, hid her face. 'I am taking you where I want you.'

'Oh, very well,' he said, shrugging his shoulders. But under his breath
he muttered, 'By heaven, I believe that the pretty fool really
thinks--that I am going to fight for her!'

To a man who had supped at White's the night before, and knew his age to
be the _âge des philosophes_, it seemed the wildest fancy in the world.
And his distaste grew. But to break off and leave her--at any rate until
he had put it beyond question that she had no underthought--to break off
and leave her after placing himself in a situation so humiliating, was
too much for the pride of a Macaroni. The lines of her head and figure
too, half guessed and half revealed, and wholly light and graceful, had
caught his fancy and created a desire to subjugate her. Reluctantly,
therefore, he continued to walk beside her, over Magdalen Bridge, and
thence by a path which, skirting the city, ran across the low wooded
meadows at the back of Merton.

A little to the right the squat tower of the college loomed against the
lighter rack of clouds, and rising amid the dark lines of trees that
beautify that part of the outskirts, formed a _coup d'oeil_ sufficiently
impressive. Here and there, in such of the chamber windows as looked
over the meadows, lights twinkled cheerfully; emboldened by which, yet