"Monica!" says a voice close to her, yet not close to her,—mysteriously, far up in mid-air, right over her head. She starts! Is the great wood peopled with satyrs, ouphs, or dryads?
CHAPTER XVII.
The marvellous history of how Monica finds the green-eyed monster in a beech-tree—and how, single-handed, she attacks and overcomes him.
It is not a tender voice. It is not even a gentle or coldly friendly voice. It is, when all is told, a distinctly angry voice, full of possible reproaches and vehement upbraidings.
Monica, raising her head with extreme nervousness, had just time to see Mr. Desmond in the huge fir-tree above her, before he drops at her feet.
"What on earth were you doing up there?" asks she, thinking it wise to adopt the offensive style, so as to be first in the field, feeling instinctively that a scolding is coming and that she deserves it.
"Watching you," returns he, sternly, nothing dismayed by her assumption of injured innocence, so her little ruse falls through.
"A charming occupation, certainly!" says Miss Beresford, with fine disgust.
"I climbed up into that tree," says Mr. Desmond, savagely, "and from it saw that you had spent your entire day with that idiot, Ryde."