“I’m afraid you’ll have to think up some better reason,” she said stubbornly. “I refuse to make myself ludicrous by carrying an arsenal to bed, to please you or any one else, Thax. If you’re really timid I suggest you cling to the pistol, yourself.”
It was a catty thing to say; and she knew it was, before the words were fairly spoken. But she was weary. And, perversely, she resented and punished her own thrill of happiness that Vail should be so concerned for her safety.
The man flushed. But he set his lips and said nothing. Dropping the pistol back into the open drawer, he prepared to join the two others in the library. But the nerve-exhausted girl was vexed at his failure to resent her slur. And, like an over-tired child, she turned pettish.
“I’m sure you’ll be safe,” she said, in affected jocosity, “if you’ll push your bed and your chiffonier against your door and see that all your bedroom windows are fast locked. Or you might room with Willis Chase. He has plenty of pluck. He’ll protect you.”
Unexpectedly Vail went up to her and took tight hold of both her hands, resisting her peevish efforts to pull them free.
“Listen to me,” he said in a maddeningly parental fashion. “You’re a naughty and disagreeable and cross little girl, and you ought to have your fingers spatted and be stood in a corner. I’m ashamed of you. Now run off to bed before you say anything else cranky; you—you bad kid!”
She fought to jerk her hands away from his exasperatingly paternal hold. In doing so she bruised one of her fingers against the seal ring he wore. The hurt completed the wreck of her self-control which humiliation had undermined.
“Let go of my hands!” she stormed. “You haven’t proved to-night that your own are any too clean.”
On the instant he dropped her fingers as if they were white hot. His face went scarlet, then gray.
“Oh!” she stammered, in belated horror of what she had said. “Oh, I didn’t mean that! Thax, honestly I didn’t! I—”