"Of course I did; though my feet got tangled in with the ivy, and I almost fell down; but, once safe on the ground, I tracked her swift enough, for she seemed to scorn moving beyond a walk."
"But she did not see you?"
"No, I can move quietly enough when it suits me. So she knew nothing of me, though I longed to give her a sharp bit of my tongue."
"I'll be bound you did," said Storms, with a disagreeable laugh.
The girl took this as a compliment, and gave the hand, which was dropped listlessly into hers, a grateful pressure.
"'It was awful ungrateful of the young gentleman, though, to be so sound asleep,' I was longing to say. If it had been my Richard, now."
"Did you think to say that?" cried Storms, starting up in sudden wrath. "Would you have dared to say that to her?"
Judith started to her feet also. He had jerked his hand from hers, and stood frowning on her in the moonlight, while defiance kindled in her eyes.
"That's just what I would 'a' been glad to say; not that she would have cared a brass farthing, for my opinion is, that girl hates your very name, for all your talk that she's dying for you. But such words from her would have been red-hot coals to me."
"Do you think she would stoop to bandy words with such as you?" said Storms, softening his wrath into a malicious enjoyment of her jealous passion.