“Yes, I saw you. I was looking at you with the deepest admiration all through lunch. And, by the way, what do you think of Miss Watson? She seems to be a wonderful billiard-player.”
“I thought you were too busy talking to Nugent to notice what we were doing,” said Willy, with some return of sulkiness. “It didn’t look as if you found it so hard to talk to him, as you’re always saying you do.”
“But I assure you we were looking at the game, Willy. I don’t understand billiards, so you can’t expect me to watch every stroke.”
“Well, I only know that I spoke to you one time, and you were so much taken up with talking about Boston or something, that you never even heard me.”
“Then you must have said it absolutely in a whisper,” I said, in heated self-defence. “Mr. O’Neill was not saying anything in the least interesting, only that he should never have thought I had been brought up in America.”
“H’m!” said Willy, in a more mollified tone. “He must have meant that for a compliment. I know what he thinks of Yankee girls. He’s told me many a queer story of one he met at Cannes last winter.”
We rounded a turn in the road, and in the twilight I could see the Durrus woods spreading darkly down to the sea. It would take another ten minutes to reach home, and, though Willy was simmering down, I knew that we were still on dangerous ground.
“What did Miss Watson say of your hand?” I asked, with the view of changing the conversation. “Did she tell you that you had ‘no sense of humour, and homicidal tendencies, combined with unusual conscientiousness’? That’s what a man once told me.”
“No,” answered Willy, quite seriously; “she didn’t say very much about my character. She was looking at my line of heart most of the time, I think. She told me that I would have ‘two great passions’ in my life, and that I was to be married soon.” He stopped, and looked at me.
“How exciting!” I said hurriedly. “My man did not tell me any of those interesting sort of things.”