For a moment, after the angry music of her voice had ceased to ring, there was a breathless silence, broken only by the straining progress of horses and chaise up the sides of another hill. Then O'Hara broke forth into a sort of roar of wounded tenderness, passion, and ire. Flinging himself back upon the seat, he seized her wrist in a grip, fierce, yet still gentle under its fierceness.
"How dare ye!" cried the man, "how dare ye doubt my love! Sure the flames of hell are cold compared to me this minute. May my tongue wither in my mouth, may it be cut out of my jaws and never speak a word of sense again, may I be struck dead at your feet, Kitty, for the rest of my life, if it's not gospel truth! Listen to my heart," he cried, with yet greater vehemence, pressing her captive hand against his breast, "isn't it Kitty, Kitty, Kitty ... that it's saying? Sure it's nothing but a bell, and your name is the clapper in it! ... And you to be railing at me because it's so much I have to say that never a word can I bring out! Oh," pursued Mr. O'Hara, waxing louder and more voluble still, "sure what could I say, with my heart in my mouth stopping the way? Look at it, you cruel woman; isn't it all yours, and aren't you sticking pins into it for sheer devilment, this minute? God forgive me, that I should say such a thing of an angel! Look at it, now, Kitty! Is that the heart of a cucumber? ... If you had said a love-apple itself.... Och, indeed, it's the real cool cucumber I am, and it's toast and water that's running through my veins like fire! ... Laugh, madam, laugh, it's a grand joke entirely! Make a pin-cushion of the cucumber! See, now, is that small ale that bursts from the wounds? Upon my soul," he cried, arrived at the height of his tempest, "I have a mind to show you the colour of it!"
He reached violently towards the back seat for his sword as he spoke, and Mistress Bellairs, suddenly arrested in her delighted paroxysm, was sufficiently convinced of the strength of his feelings to stop him with clinging hands and clamouring little notes of terror:
"O'Hara! madman!—for God's sake, Denis!"
"Ah!" cried he. "It's not hot enough I was for ye. It's the cold husband you're afraid of. Ah, Kitty, you've stirred the sleeping dog, you mustn't complain now if you can't put out the fire!"
So saying, he turned and clasped her in an embrace that left her scarcely breath to scream, had she so wished, and had indeed the kisses which he rained upon her lips allowed her space in which to place a protest.
Her light soul, her easy shallow nature, was carried as it were off its feet in the whirlwind of a passion the mere existence of which, with all her experience, she had never even guessed. To say the truth, so much as she had deemed him vastly too cold, so now she found him vastly too hot. She was a woman of niceties, an epicure in life and love, and nothing met with her favour but the delicate happy mean. This was a revelation, with a warning.
"Mr. O'Hara," she gasped, at length released, fluttering like a ruffled dove, all in anger and fear, "such treatment! For a gentleman, sir, you strangely forget yourself." She laid her hand on the window strap. "Not a word, sir, or I will instantly give the order to turn back."
"Oh," cried the unhappy lover, and tore at his hair with desperate fingers, filling the ambient air with flakes of powder which shone silvery in the moonlight. "You drove me to it. Ah, don't be frightened of me, my darling; that hurts me the worst of all! I'm quiet now, Kitty."
His labouring breath hissed between his words, and his satin coat creaked under each quivering muscle.