Part 45 (2/2)
”He is on duty and gone to the fort.”
”Where he belongs,” I growled, ”and not eternally at your heels.”
She raised her eyes and looked at me curiously.
”Are you jealous?” she demanded, beginning to smile; then, suddenly the smile vanished and she shot at me a darker look, and stood considering me with lips slightly compressed, hostile and beautiful.
”As for that fop of an Ensign----” I began--but she took the word from my mouth:
”A fiddle-stick! It is I who have cause to complain of you, not you of me! You throw dust in my eyes by accusing where you should stand otherwise accused. And you know it!”
”I? Accused of what?”
”If you don't know, then I need not humiliate myself to inform you. But I think you do know, for you looked guilty enough----”
”Guilty of what?”
”Of what? I don't know what you may be guilty of. But you sat on the stairs with your simpering inamorata--and your courts.h.i.+p quarrels and your tender reconciliations were plain enough to--to sicken anybody----”
”Lois! That is no proper way to speak of----”
”It is your own affair--and hers! I ask your pardon--but she flaunted her intimacy with you so openly and indiscreetly----”
”There is no common sense in what you say!” I exclaimed angrily. ”If I----”
”Was she not ever drowning her very soul in your sheep's eyes? And even not scrupling to shamelessly caress you in the face of all----”
”Caress me!”
”Did she not stand for ten full minutes with her hand upon your shoulder, and a-sighing and simpering----”
”That was no caress! It was full innocent and----”
”Is she so innocent? Indeed! I had scarcely thought it of her,” she said disdainfully.
”She is a true, good girl, innocent of any evil intention whatsoever----”
”I pray you, Euan, spare me your excited rhapsodies. If you prefer this most bewitching--minx----”
”She is no minx!” I retorted hotly; and Lois as hotly faced me, pink to her ears with exasperation.
”You do favour her! You do! You do! Say what you will, you are ever listening for the flutter of her petticoats on the stairs, ever at her French heels, ever at moony gaze with her--and a scant inch betwixt your noses! So that you come not again to me vowing what you have vowed to me--I care not how you and she conduct----”
”I do prefer you!” I cried, furious to be so misconstrued. ”I love only one, and that one is you!”
”Oh, Euan, yours is a most broad and catholic heart; and any pretty penitent can find her refuge there; and any petticoat can flutter it!”
”Yours can. Even your fluttering rags did that!”
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