"Why, yes, it isn't like you. It's never happened before. Look here. I drop into the Bullers' yesterday; find Clara sidled up to the judge; look around for you. 'Hello,' I say, 'where's Flora?' 'Oh,' says she, 'Flora's at home amusing Mr. Kerr.' 'Amusing Mr. Kerr!'" he repeated. "That's a nice thing to hear."
Flora went red. She walked down the room from him to give her suddenly tumultuous heart time. However little he might guess the real trend of her interview with Kerr, she couldn't hear him come near it without apprehension. She was angry, helplessly angry at Harry that he had taken this moment for his stupid jealousy. But she was more angry at Clara, since such a speech on Clara's part wasn't carelessness. She had meant it to work upon him, and here he stood, like the fine animal that he was, smoldering with the suspicion of encroachment on his prey.
She tried to laugh him out of it.
"Why, Harry, I never saw you jealous before!"
"It's all very well to say that—and you know I've never made a row about the other Johnnies. I knew you didn't care for any of them."
Her eyes narrowed and darkened.
"And you take it for granted I care for Mr. Kerr?"
"Oh, no, no!" He pushed his hand through his hair with an irascible gesture. "But it's plain enough you like him—you women always like a fellow that flourishes—but that's not the sort of man I care to see hanging around my girl."
Flora stood leaning on the table, breathing a little hurriedly, feeling rather as if she had been shaken. Harry, standing with his hands in his pockets, looked not unlike the threatening image he had appeared in the back of the goldsmith's shop.
"Of course, the fellow can talk," he admitted, "and he has a manner. But Lord knows where he comes from or who he is. Why, even the Bullers don't know."