“You’re not just the person I was looking for,” he said finally, with a touch of irony.
“How fortunate!” she replied, in a tone that was like a mocking echo of his own.
Her eyes met his unflinchingly, a little impudently, telling him nothing; then they slowly fell, and rested on the revolver in his hand. With a shrug he thrust the weapon into its holster.
“Thank you!” she said sweetly. “You really won’t need it.”
He jerked his head impatiently.
“How did you get in here?” he demanded, quite as roughly as before.
There was no reason in the world why she should not have answered him simply and directly; but she did not. She was exasperated, not so much by his words as by his manner, and not so much by his manner even as by something provocative in the man himself. He was rude, but it was not his rudeness that most annoyed her. She scarcely knew what it was,––perhaps a certain indifference, a certain cold contempt that she detected underlying all his anger, a certain icy and impenetrable reserve that, for all his hot words, and for all his lowering looks, she resented most as being in some way personal to her. And instantly the minx in her rose up for mischief.
“By aeroplane, of course!” she said tartly.
It was a silly speech, and she regretted it almost before it had left her lips.
A faint flush came into the enemy’s face.