“Thank you, old dear!” Larry answered gently, without looking at her; but when he was downstairs again, he refused Verity’s hospitality brusquely.
“I don’t want anythin’ in that line,” he said rather roughly, “and old Grange can go on starvin’ a bit longer, for a change! I told you I’d somethin’ to say to you, but I don’t fancy talkin’ to a painted marionette, so suppose you go away an’ wash your face!”
“I’m not in a mood for being ‘talked to,’” she replied, flushing indignantly under his disapproving gaze, “and if you can’t be even moderately polite, you had better go away and let me get off to bed, for I’m simply dead tired.”
“You’ll have to keep awake, anyhow, till I’m through,” he said doggedly. “But I want to talk to the girl I’m used to seein’, an’ not to a music-hall turn. You’d better do what I say, or there’ll be all the more time goin’ beggin’ for Billy.”
When she had gone, he remained beside the dying fire, alternately staring moodily at the flickering coal and addressing himself gloomily in the overmantel. Deborah had been right, he told himself, miserably. The crisis in their light love-making had come at last, and neither he nor Verity knew how to meet it. Would the bond between them really bear the strain? Or would to-morrow see the beginning of a new and empty life, separated from the old, happy, laughing one for ever?
She came back presently without her cap, her little face faintly flushed, her shining hair brushed in smooth waves from its Madonna-like parting.
“Now what is it?” she asked peremptorily, anything but Madonna-like in demeanour. “You seem in a shockingly bad temper, and I can’t think why. After all, Billy-boy is no concern of yours in any way, and you’ve got to promise me before you go that you’ll leave him alone.”
“It’s every decent man’s concern when a low cad’s insultin’ a lady,” Larrupper answered stubbornly. “I ought never to have allowed you to have anythin’ to do with him, but you’re always so set on havin’ your own way, there’s no movin’ you. Well, you can have any way you find pleasin’ when I’m through with Billy.”
“No, no, Larrupper—please!” she begged, growing alarmed before his steady grimness. “It’s true I ought never to have asked him, but I thought he would keep straight for me—indeed I did! He’s never failed me before. There seems to have been a sort of fate in it. Oh, I know I did wrong in not leaving him alone, but you won’t improve matters by going for him or—or hammering him. He’ll only turn nasty, and never look at any of us again. That’s the way to send him to the dogs for life.”
“An’ the best place for him!” Larry added heartily. “It’s no use bullyin’ me. This is man’s work, as I told you before. An’ I’m not starvin’ old Grange for the pleasure of talkin’ about Blackburn. There’s somethin’ else. That parson was makin’ love to you!”