Not one of those candles can be spared if I am to believe you are Miss Caroline." Again she laughed, revealing now a girlish freshness in the small mouth, that had somehow lingered to belie the deeper, graver lines about her dark eyes.

As she still regarded me with that smiling, waiting lift of the short upper lip, I called out:-- "More lights, Clem! I need all you have." Whereat Miss Caroline fell into her chair with a marvellous blush, an undeniable darkening of the pink on cheeks that were in texture like the finest, sheerest lawn.
Never thereafter could I refuse credence to tales, of which many came to me, exposing Miss Caroline as an able and relentless coquette.

Nor could I fail to understand how the late Colonel Jere Lansdale would have found need to be a duellist after he became her lover, even had he aforetime been unskilled in that difficult art.
As she chatted, chiefly of her journey, I falsely pretended to listen, whereas I only stared and in spirit was prostrate before her.

Mere kneeling at her feet savored too nearly of arrogance.

I felt the need to be a spread rug in her presence.