'No,' he answered, not moving. 'There are other reasons. And you are mistaken about me. I am not a coward. Do not say it again. Do you understand?'
Again she shrugged her shoulders, as though to say that it mattered little to her whether he were a coward or not. But she did not like the look in his eyes, though she did not believe that he would hurt her. She had heard of his occasional terrible outbreaks of anger, but had never seen him in one of them. He was beginning to look dangerous now, she thought. She wondered whether she had gone too far, but reflected that, after all, if she meant to exasperate him into a promise of marriage, she must risk something.
'Do not make me say it,' she replied, more gently than she had spoken yet.
Few feminine retorts are more irritating than that one, of which most women know the full value, but in some way it acted upon Tebaldo as a counter-irritant to his real anger.
'No,' said Tebaldo, and his eyelids suddenly drooped, 'you shall say something else. As you are just going away, this is hardly the moment to fix a day for our marriage.'
She started slightly at the words, and looked at him. His eyes were less red, and the natural brown colour was coming back in his cheeks. She thought the moment of danger past.
'I shall be back in a fortnight,' she answered.
'There will be time enough when you come back,' he said in his usual tone of voice. 'Provided that you do not change your mind in the meantime,' he added, with a tolerably easy smile. 'Do not forget that you love Francesco.' He laughed, for he was really a good actor.
She laughed too, but uneasily, more to quiet herself than to make him think that she was in a good-humour again.