“You are awfully rough on me,” he interrupted. “But I suppose I deserve it.”
“Now I have but one character, such as it is, so I cannot reciprocate your surprise. I am merely what you have always seen—a country-bred girl, without fortune, or prospect of one, with a taste for playing the violin, and for speaking out my mind at any cost.”
(Yes, there never was any one less at pains to be on the safe side than this young woman.)
“You are disgusted to find that I am not a poor relation,” he ventured to remark.
“I am. You remember that on this very spot”—touching the railings with her fan—“two months ago, Colonel Sladen, with his usual delicate taste, joked pleasantly about the millionaire, your cousin. You laughed immoderately then. Yes, I remember, you actually shook the railings! And”—with increasing wrath—“you are smiling now. Of course it must be capital fun to take people in so successfully! to be able to laugh openly—as well as in your sleeve.”
“Will you permit me to remind you of one small fact? Do you remember that you turned to me and said, that if I were rich you would never speak to me again? You were offering a premium on poverty.”
“And I repeat that speech here,” she said, once more turning to face him. “Now that I find you are rich”—she caught her breath—“I will never speak to you again.”
“Oh, come, I say, Miss Gordon, you can’t mean that,” he expostulated. “At least you will give me a hearing. Be angry—but be just.”
She made no reply, but began to strip little bits of bark from the rustic railing, to the utter destruction of her gloves.
“Admitted that I am the millionaire, that is merely to accept the nickname; for it is not I, but my uncle, who is wealthy. He made a fortune in trade, you know—Pollitt’s pearl barley—and I am his adopted son. He has brought me up ever since I was ten years old, and has been awfully good to me.”