"Forbid me!" exclaims she passionately, tears starting to her eyes. "You are fond of forbidding, as it seems to me. Recollect, sir, that, though unhappily your ward, I am neither your child nor your wife."
"I assure you I had never the presumption to imagine you in the latter character," he answers, haughtily, turning very pale, but speaking steadily and in a tone eminently uncomplimentary.
"Your voice says more than your words," exclaims Lilian, too angry to weigh consequences. "Am I to understand"—with an unlovely laugh—"you think me unworthy to fill so exalted a position?"
"As you press me for the truth," says Chetwoode, who has lost his temper completely, "I confess I should hardly care to live out my life with such a——"
"Yes, go on; 'with such a—' shrew, is it? or perhaps virago?"
"As you wish it," with a contemptuous shrug; "either will suit, but I was going to say 'flirt.'"
"Were you?" cries she, tears of mortification and rage dimming her eyes, all the spoiled child within her rising in arms. "Flirt, am I? and shrew? Well, I will not have the name of it without the gain of it. I hate you, hate you, hate you!"
With the last word she raises her hand suddenly and administers to him a sound and wholesome box upon the ear.
The effect is electric. Sir Guy starts back as though stunned. Never in all his life has he been so utterly taken aback, routed with such deadly slaughter. The dark, hot color flames into his cheeks. Shame for her—a sort of horror that she should have been guilty of such an act—overpowers him. Involuntarily he puts one hand up to the cheek her slender fingers, now hanging so listlessly at her side, have wounded, while regarding her with silent amazement largely mixed with reproach.
As for Lilian, the deed once done, she would have given worlds to recall it,—that is, secretly,—but in this life, unfortunately, facts accomplished cannot be undone. Outwardly she is as defiant as ever, and, though extremely white, steadily and unflinchingly returns his gaze.