Piqued, she thrust him from her with a quick gesture. It is one thing to be quickly conquered; it is another to be classed among the easy conquests.
“You’re insolent, milord!” she said, with out-thrust lip.
“My pretty one,” he answered her, “anger becomes you vastly; but as for myself, I have a preference for the dimpled smile.”
He let his arm drop from her carelessly. She stood looking down at him, fascinated, taunted, uncertain.
“Believe me,” he went on in the same tone, half condescending, half caressing, “I am much older than you; I have had experience—life becomes much pleasanter, its few good hours vastly easier of discovery, if we agree to take certain things for granted. And, as example is ever better than preaching, let us put my theory in practice. I, now, take it for granted,” as he spoke his fine teeth flashed a second in a wider smile, “that you are all virtue, yet that you harbour for my unworthy self an amiable passion which excuses, nay, commands, a gentle lapse. You on your side take it for granted that I am consumed with an ardour unknown hitherto in my existence. Come, does not that place us instantly on a delightful footing? And this being so: why, then, come back to my side.”
She palpitated between fury and the extraordinary attraction which drew her to him. Her breast heaved, her eye first lightened, then melted. She took an unwilling step, then paused. Almost a sob rose in her throat. In another moment she would have flung herself on his breast, as he sat awaiting her with that air of amused certainty that was in itself at once part of his fascination for her and an insult to her every instinct of pride, when suddenly she perceived that his eye had become fixed and distant. The insolent wretch had already dropped her from his thoughts; she was not worth to him even that pause of expectation!
Staring through the south window, up the river toward that gloomy bridge through the arches of which she had come to him, his attention was absorbed, his glance had gained a hawk-like keenness; the lines of his face were set. Whatever he beheld without, it was something that evoked far keener interest in him than the woman who had come to his call, in preference to that of a king. This was too much!
“Adieu, milord,” she cried in a high, strained voice. But, womanlike, she must see what it was, without there, on that hideous river, that he was looking at.
The royal barge, with its standard and pennants, its flash of scarlet and the long swing of red-and-gold oars, was already masked under the shadow of the battlements; nothing but the long stretch of water, dotted with black craft, met the searching of her angry eyes.