"So're you crackin'! I thought something was wrong, man? O Lord, this is a treat!"
"It's a treat she didn't prepare one for. I had visions of a very different upshot."
"Aha! you never know where you have our Tiny. No more does old Manister. Oh, but this is a treat for the gods!"
"I told Tiny it was a performance," Erskine said reflectively; "it struck me as one, and I was trying to cheer her up—but that wasn't the way."
"No? She's a terror, our Tiny!" murmured Herbert, with a running chuckle. "Now I know why the brute was so civil to me the first time I met him in these parts. Even then my hand itched to fill his eye for him, but I didn't say anything, because Tiny seemed on the job herself. To think this was her game! I must go and shake hands with her. I must go and tell her she's done better than filling up his eye."
"Don't you," said Erskine quietly. "I wouldn't say much to her afterward, either, if I may give you a hint. She doesn't take quite our view of this matter. Not that we can pretend that ours is at all a nice view of it, mind you; only I really do regard it as a bit of a performance on our Tiny's part, and I should like to have seen it."
"By ghost, so should I! And seriously," added Herbert, "he deserved all he's got. I happen to know."
CHAPTER XIV.
A CYCLE OF MOODS.
But the girl herself chose to think otherwise. That was her perversity. She could now see excuses for her own ill-treatment in the past, but none for the revenge she had just taken on the man who had treated her badly. A revenge it had certainly been, plotted systematically, and carried out from first to last in sufficiently cold blood. But already she was ashamed of it. So sincerely ashamed was Christina, now that she had completed her retaliation and secured her triumph, that she very much exaggerated the evil she had done, and could imagine no baser behavior than her own. She had, indeed, felt the baseness of it while yet there was time to draw back, but the memory of her own humiliation had been her goad whenever she hesitated; and then the way had been made irresistibly easy for her. But this was no comfort to her now. Neither was that goad any excuse to her self-accusing mind; for she could feel it no longer, which made her wonder how she had ever felt it at all. Her judgment was obscured by the magnitude of her meanness in her own eyes. The revulsion of feeling was as complete as it was startling and distressing to herself.