"How beautiful you are!" babbled the Irishman at last.
Mistress Bellairs sat up with an angry start. It was as if she had been stung.
"Heavens!" cried she, thrusting her little forefingers into her ears. "Mr. O'Hara, if you say that again, I shall jump out of the chay."
Her eyes flashed; she looked capable of fulfilling her threat upon the spot.
"Me darling heart," said he, and had perforce to lay his hands upon her to keep her still. "Sure what else can I say to you, with my eyes upon your angel face?"
Apparently the lady's ears were not so completely stopped but that such words could penetrate.
"'Tis monstrous," said she in hot indignation, "that I should go to all this trouble to escape from the bleating of that everlasting refrain, and have it buzzed at me," she waxed incoherent under the sense of her injuries, "thus at the very outset!"
"My dear love," said he, humbly, capturing the angry, gesticulating hand, "sure me heart's so full that it's just choking me."
She felt him tremble beside her as he spoke.
Now the trembling lover was not of those that entered into Mistress Kitty's scheme of existence. She had, perhaps, reckoned, when planning her escapade, upon being made to tremble a little herself. She had certainly reckoned upon a journey this evening that should be among the most memorable in the annals of her impressions. O'Hara bashful! O'Hara tongue-tied! O'Hara with cold fingers that hardly dared to touch hers! O'Hara, the gay rattler, with constrained lips!