“Rather than go I 'd say anything.”
“As how, for instance?”
He leaned forward and whispered a few words in her ear, and suddenly her face became scarlet, her eyes flashed passionately, as she said, “This passes the limit of jest, Mr. Maitland.”
“Not more than the other would pass the limit of patience,” said he; and now, instead of entering the drawing-room, he turned short round and sought his own room.
CHAPTER XXIII. THE FIRST NIGHT AT TILNEY
Mattland was not in the best of tempers when he retired to his room. Whatever the words he had whispered in Alice's ear,—and this history will not record them,—they were a failure. They were even worse than a failure, for they produced an effect directly the opposite to that intended.
“Have I gone too fast?” muttered he; “have I deceived myself? She certainly understood me well in what I said yesterday. She, if anything, gave me a sort of encouragement to speak. She drew away her hand, it is true, but without any show of resentment or anger; a sort of protest, rather, that implied, 'We have not yet come to this.' These home-bred women are hard riddles to read. Had she been French, Spanish, or Italian,—ay, or even one of our own, long conversant with the world of Europe,—I never should have blundered.” Such thoughts as these be now threw on paper, in a letter to his friend Caffarelli.
“What a fiasco I have made, Carlo mio,” said he, “and all from not understanding the nature of these creatures, who have never seen a sunset south of the Alps. I know how little sympathy any fellow meets with from you, if he be only unlucky. I have your face before me,—your eyebrows on the top of your forehead, and your nether lip quivering with malicious drollery, as you cry out, 'Ma perche? perche? perche?' And I'll tell you why: because I believed that she had hauled down her colors, and there was no need to continue firing.
“Of course you'll say, 'Meno male,' resume the action. But it won't do, Signor Conte, it won't do. She is not like one of your hardened coquettes on the banks of the Arno or the slopes of Castellamare, who think no more of a declaration of love than an invitation to dinner; nor have the slightest difficulty in making the same excuse to either,—a pre-engagement. She is English, or worse again, far worse,—Irish.