"Why," said she aloud, with the cooing note of her most melting mood, "I protest one would think, sir, that you were afraid of me."
"Aye, Kitty," said he, simply; "and so I am."
"Oh, fie!" she laughed. "And how have I alarmed you? Think of me," said she, and leaned her face towards him with a smile of archest wit, "not as a stranger, but as a sisther, as a dear, dear cousin."
His eye flamed back at her. Her merry mood was as incongruous to his sudden, storm-serious growth of passion as the gay lilt of a tambourine might be to a solemn chant.
"I think of you," he said, and there was a deep thrill in his voice, "as my wife that is to be."
And so saying he fell upon his knees in the narrow space, and tenderly kissed a fold of her lace, as one, from the knowledge of his own fire, afraid of a nearer touch.
The word "wife" had never a pleasing sound in the lovely widow's ears. From neither the past nor the future did it evoke for her an attractive picture.
Coming from those lips, by which it was the very last name she desired to hear herself called, it aroused in her as pretty a fit of fury as ever she had indulged in.
"Now, indeed, is the murder out!" she cried. "Oh, you men are all alike. As lovers—all fire, capsicums Indian suns! Bottles of Sillery always bursting! Torrents not to be stemmed.... But, lo you! let the lover once fancy himself the husband, let the vision of the coveted mistress but merge into the prospect of the secured wife.... Merciful heavens, what a change! For fire we have ice; for the red, biting capsicum, the green, cool cucumber; for joyous, foaming Sillery, the smallest ale; small ale—nay, toast and water!" cried Mistress Kitty, lashing herself to finer frenzy. "And if the mere sense of your security thus transforms the lover in you, what a pleasing prospect, indeed, lies before the wedded wife! No, thank you, sir," said the lady, and pushed the petrified O'Hara with an angry foot, "I have had one wintry, toast-and-water husband, and that shall be enough for my lifetime. Thank God, it is not too late yet!" she fumed. "I am not yet, sir, Mistress O'Hara."
And in the very midst of her indignation: "This will," she thought, "simplify the parting at Devizes." But no whit was her wrath thereby abated, that the fool should have spoiled her pretty ride.