“I can’t help it,” I said, savagely. “He’s as obtuse as a tortoise. He ought to see he’s in the way.”
“You give me credit for too delicate a discrimination, my good brother. But I’ll go if I’m not wanted.”
“No, you sha’n’t, Mr. Trender. I won’t be a party to such behavior.”
I turned upon the girl with a white face, I could feel.
“Dolly,” I said, hoarsely. “If he goes with you, I don’t!”
Her face flushed with anger for the first time in my knowledge of her.
“You can do just as you like, Renny, and spoil my day if you want to. But I haven’t given you the right to order me about as if I was a child.”
Without another word I turned upon my heel and left them. I was furious with a conflicting rage of emotions—detestation of my brother, anger toward Dolly, baffled vanity and mad disappointment. In a moment the sunshine of the day had been tortured into gloom. The sting of that was the stab I felt most keenly in the first tumult of my passion. That this soft caprice of sex I had condescended to so masterfully in my thoughts should turn upon and defy me! I had not deemed such a thing possible. Had she only played with me after all, coquetting and humoring and rending after the manner of her kind? Were it so, she should hear of the mere pity that had driven me to patronizing consideration of her claims; should learn of my essential indifference to her in a very effectual manner.
I am ashamed to recall the first violence with which, in my mind, I tortured that poor gentle image. As my rage cooled, it wrought, I must confess, an opposite revenge. Then Dolly became in my eyes a treasure more desirable than ever, now my chance of gaining her seemed shaken. I thought of all her tender moods and pretty ways, so that my eyes filled with tears. I had behaved rudely, had shocked her gentle sense of decorum. And here, by reason of an exaggerated spleen, had I thrown her alone into the company of the very man whose influence over her I most dreaded.
And what would Duke say—Duke, who in noble abrogation of his own claims had so pathetically committed to my care this child of his deep unselfish love?