Chapter Seven.
Lambert—Out of it.
”...And I can really give you no other answer.”
“Don’t say that, Mona. We haven’t known each other so very long, certainly, but still...”
“It isn’t that, Dr Lambert. I like you very much, and all that sort of thing, but I can say no more than I have said.”
The two were alone together under the shade of the trees behind the house: Mona, still furtively engaged in the favourite pastime Lambert had come upon her more actively pursuing—viz., lying in a hammock admiring her own magnificent proportions. The doctor’s infatuation, fired to fever heat over the symmetrical and sensuous grace of this splendid creature, had taken words, and we have just come in for the end of his proposal and—rejection.
“Of course, some one else,” he jerked out bitterly, after a few moments of silence. “Lucky chap, anyhow; only, don’t take too much on trust in that quarter,” with a sneer.
She half started up in her hammock, and her eyes flashed. The compression of her lips, together with the hardening of the lower half of her face, was not now attractive; to an impartial spectator, it would have bordered on the repellent. But Lambert was not an impartial spectator, being madly in love.
“That’s right,” she retorted. “Pray go on. Just like all you men,” with bitter, stinging emphasis. “When you can’t have everything as you want it you swing round and become insulting.”