"That's right! That's what I wanted," he said. "Now you've got it, and you can keep it. I'll tell Lady T. where to look for it—unless you'll change your mind, and give me that kiss."
I was so angry, so stricken with horror and a kind of nightmare fear which I had not time to analyze, that I stood silent, trembling all over, with the brooch in my hand. How silly I had been to play his game for him, just like the poor stupid cat who pulled the hot chestnut out of the fire! I don't think any chestnut could ever have been as hot as that bursting sun!
I wanted to drop it in the grass, or throw it as far as I could see it, but dared not, because it would be my fault that it was lost, and Lady Turnour would believe Bertie's story all the more readily. She would think he had seen me with the jewel, and that I'd hidden it because I was afraid of what he might do.
"To kiss, or not to kiss. That's the question," laughed Bertie.
"Is it?" said Jack. And Jack's hand, inside Mr. Stokes's beautiful, tall collar, shook Bertie back and forth till his teeth chattered like castanets, and his good-looking pink face grew more and more like a large, boiled beetroot.
I had seen Jack coming, long enough to have counted ten before he came. But I didn't count ten. I just let him come.
Bertie could not speak: he could only gurgle. And if I had been a Roman lady in the amphitheatre of Nîmes, or somewhere, I'm afraid I should have wanted to turn my thumb down.
"What was the beast threatening you with?" Jack wanted to know.
"The beast was threatening to make Lady Turnour think I'd stolen this brooch, which he'd taken himself," I panted, through the beatings of my heart.
"If you didn't kiss him?"