"Do you think," says Miss Beresford, with awful calm, "that it was a gentlemanly thing to climb into that tree, like a horrid schoolboy, and spy upon a person?—do you?"
"I don't," vehemently, "but I was driven to it. I don't care what is gentlemanly. I don't care," furiously, "what you think of me. I only know that my mind is now satisfied about you, and that I know you are the most abominable flirt in the world, and that you ought to be ashamed of yourself."
"Well, I'm not," with great self-possession.
"The more to your discredit! That only means that you are bent on doing it again."
"I shall certainly always talk to any man who talks to me. That is," cuttingly, "any man who knows how to conduct himself with propriety."
"Meaning—I don't, I suppose?"
"Certainly you don't."
"Oh, if it comes to that," says Desmond, in tones of the deepest desperation, and as if nothing is left to expect but the deluge in another moment.
And, in effect, it comes. Not, as one has been taught to expect, in sudden storm, and wind, and lightning, but first in soft light drops, and then in a perfect downpour, that bursts upon them with passionate fury.
As they are standing beneath a magnificent beech, they get but a taste of the shower in reality, though Desmond, seeing some huge drops lying on Monica's thin white gown, feels his heart smite him.