The furious monosyllable snapped through his rambling talk like a pistol shot. Caleb paused in amaze. The girl had risen. Her tiny fists were clinched, her face was hard as a statue’s. The moonlight gave back cold fire from her great eyes.
“How dare you?” she panted, “How dare you! You speak of marrying Letty Standish as you would speak of buying a horse! You even talk it over with the man she has promised to marry! But I suppose you chuckled to yourself over your barroom cunning in getting an opinion from him without letting him know it was his sweetheart you planned to steal. You sneer at her as a ‘rabbit-faced little bunch of silliness’ and yet you speak in the same breath of making her your wife. Do you realize you are not only insulting her by such a thought, but you are insulting me by speaking so in my presence?”
“Dey!” gasped the bewildered man, “You must be crazy, child! I never saw you like—”
“Be still!” she commanded, her silver voice ringing harsh, “I forbid you to speak to me, now or any time. A man who can plan what you are planning, and who can boast of it, isn’t fit to speak to any woman. You went to that house as a guest—and you asked mens’ opinions in the smoking room—”
“It was the dressin’ room, Dey,” he pleaded, “An’ it was only me an’ Caine—”
“You ask mens’ opinion,” blazed on Desirée, unheeding, “as to whether you are likely to gain anything in a social way by wrecking an innocent girl’s life. You sit by her at dinner—at her own father’s table—and plan in smug complacency how to separate her from a man she really loves,—and to compel her to marry you. Why, you aren’t fit to marry her chambermaid. There isn’t a groom in her stable that hasn’t higher, holier ideals. Now go! This is the last time I want to see you as long as I live!”
A swirl of soft skirts, the sharp slam of a door, and Caleb Conover, aghast, wordless with dismay stood alone on the little moon-lit porch.
For a full minute he stood there, dumbfounded. Then, from somewhere in the darkness beyond the closed door, came faintly the sound of sobbing. Rending, heartbroken sobs that brought a lump to his own throat.
“Dey!” he called, frantically miserable, “Dey!”
He tried the locked door, and rapped as loudly as he dared upon its panels. The sobbing died away. For an hour Conover waited; alternately whispering the girl’s name and tapping appealingly for admittance. But the house remained silent. At length with a despairing growl he turned away.