.
You would have loved me then." She turned white as death, then, walking slowly up in front of him: "You lie!" she said in even tones.
Confronted, never stirring, their eyes met; and in the cold, concentrated fury which possessed her she set her small teeth and stared at him, rigid, menacing, terrible in her outraged pride.
After a while he stirred; a quiver twitched his set features.
"Nevertheless--" he said, partly to himself.

Then, drawing a long breath, he turned, unhooked his sabre from a nail where it hung, buckled his belt, picked up the lance which stood slanting across a chair, shook out the scarlet, swallow-tailed pennon, and walked slowly toward the door--and met Letty coming in.
"Mrs.Paige," she said, "we couldn't imagine what had become of you--" and glancing inquiringly at Berkley, started, and uttered a curious little cry: "You!" "Yes," he said, smiling through his own astonishment.
"Oh!" she cried with a happy catch in her voice, and held out both hands to him; and he laid aside his lance and took them, laughing down into the velvet eyes.

And he saw the gray garb of Sainte Ursula that she wore, saw the scarlet heart on her breast, and laughed again--a kindly, generous, warm-hearted laugh; but there was a little harmless malice glimmering in his eyes.
"Wonderful--wonderful, Miss Lynden"-- he had never before called her Miss Lynden--"I am humbly overcome in the presence of Holy Sainte Ursula embodied in you.

How on earth did old Benton ever permit you to escape?
He wrote me most enthusiastically about you before I--ahem--left town." "Why didn't you let me know where you were going ?" asked Letty with a reproachful simplicity that concentrated Ailsa's amazed attention on her, for she had been looking scornfully at Berkley.
"Why--you are very kind, Miss Lynden, but I, myself, didn't know where I was going." "I--I wanted to write you," began Letty; and suddenly remembered Ailsa's presence and turned, shyly: "Mrs.Paige," she said, "this private soldier is Mr.Berkley--a gentleman.

May I be permitted to present him to you ?" And there, while the tragic and comic masks grinned side by side, and the sky and earth seemed unsteadily grinning above and under her feet, Ailsa Paige suffered the mockery of the presentation; felt the terrible irony of it piercing her; felt body and senses swaying there in the candle-light; heard Letty's happy voice and Berkley's undisturbed replies; found courage to speak, to take her leave; made her way back through a dreadful thickening darkness to her room, to her bed, and lay there silent, because she could not weep..