“It’s she who has put him up to this. You must get round her!”
CHAPTER XIV.
JACK ROTHERFIELD’S EFFRONTERY
Lady Sarah was nothing if not versatile. She had scarcely whispered these warning words to Jack Rotherfield when she danced across the room to Minnie, and laughingly said:
“You lazy girl! You’re always curled up in a chair or a couch, and you never take any exercise. Come out and race me to the end of the grass path. I don’t believe you’ve been out all day.”
The ruse was not a very subtle one, and Rhoda and the sharp-eyed Minnie knew at once that Lady Sarah desired to leave the other two together.
Rhoda, however, walked at once quickly towards the door, with the intention of avoiding an unpleasant tête-à-tête.
But of course Jack Rotherfield was far too much accustomed to getting his own way with the ladies not to know how, in the most charming and winning manner, to frustrate her purpose.
Springing across the room with the agility of a boy, he stood, laughing, before the door, and said:
“No, no, you shan’t run away like that, as if I were an ogre. I have forgiven you your unkindness to me this morning, and in return you must forgive me if I was not very civil.”
But his effrontery, instead of succeeding with her, made her angry. Looking him steadily in the face, she said, her eyes flashing the steely fire that only blue eyes can show: