Suddenly a soft voice spoke at her shoulder. "What! Still sulking? Do you know you are remarkably like a boy?"
She turned with a great start, meeting the eyes she feared. "I don't know what you mean," she said, drawing sharply back.
He laughed his smooth, easy laugh. "I mean that you are behaving like a cub in need of chastisement. Do you seriously think I am going to put up with it—from a chit like you?"
She looked him up and down with a single flashing glance of clear scorn.
"How much do you think I am going to put up with?" she said.
He leaned his arms upon the rail in an attitude of supreme complacence. "I may be the villain of the piece," he observed, "but I have no desire to be melodramatic. I have come over here to talk to you quietly and sensibly about the future. Of course if you—"
"What have you to do with my future?" she thrust in fiercely. She would have given all she had to be calm at that moment, but calmness was beyond her. Though her fear had utterly departed, she was quivering with indignation from head to foot.
Hunt-Goring kept his face turned downwards towards the swirl of water that leaped by them. He was quite plainly prepared for the question.
"Since you ask me," he responded coolly, "I should say—a good deal."
"In what way?" she demanded.
She could see that he was still smiling—that maddening, perpetual smile, and she thought that her sheer abhorrence of the man would choke her. But with all her throbbing strength she held herself in check.