"Tellier told me you were Americans—but I should have known it anyway."
"Tellier!" she repeated, turning upon him fiercely, welcoming the opportunity to create a diversion. "Then he was your emissary! And to think that I defended you!"
"My emissary?" he stammered. "Defended me?"
"Yes, when—when—some one said you had sent him to us—"
"Sent him to you!" he cried, flushing darkly. "Do you mean to say that he has been annoying you?"
"It was almost that."
"Ah!" he said. "Ah!" and he grasped his stick in a way that boded ill for Monsieur Tellier.
Susie, glancing up at him, thought it very fine. He was such a volcano, and there was such a fearful pleasure in stirring him up—in skipping over the thin crust with a lively consciousness of the boiling lava beneath!
"Then you didn't send him?" she inquired, sweetly.
"Send him! Miss Rushford, do you think for a moment that I would be so rude, so impertinent? Tell me you do not think so!"