]
He looked at her, half laughing, half anxious.
"Tell me!--last night--you thought me intolerant--overbearing?"
"I disliked being beaten," said Diana, candidly; "especially as it was
only my ignorance that was beaten--not my cause."
"Shall we begin again?"
Through his gayety, however, a male satisfaction in victory pierced very
plainly. Diana winced a little.
"No, no! I must go back to Captain Roughsedge first and get some new
arguments!"
"Roughsedge!" he said, in surprise. "Roughsedge? He never carried an
argument through in his life!"
Diana defended her new friend to ears unsympathetic. Her defence,
indeed, evoked from him a series of the same impatient, sarcastic
remarks on the subject of the neighbors as had scandalized her the day
before. She fired up, and they were soon in the midst of another
battle-royal, partly on the merits of particular persons and partly on a
more general theme--the advantage or disadvantage of an optimist view of
your fellow-creatures.
Marsham was, before long, hard put to it in argument, and very
delicately and discreetly convicted of arrogance or worse. They were
entering the woods of the park when he suddenly stopped and said:
"Do you know that you have had a jolly good revenge--pressed down and
running over?"
Diana smiled, and said nothing.
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