“Keep your hair on, Southerley,” said Bayre. “He’s only chaffing you. You can’t suppose the lady felt any more spontaneous admiration for my charms than I did for hers. So you needn’t waste good jealousy upon me which might be useful some other time. She looked at me, if she looked at all, because I looked at her. And I only looked because I wondered what on earth you could find to rave about in a restless, fidgety, excitable-looking girl, who looked as if she couldn’t stand still for two minutes. Depend upon it she’s hysterical, and that she’s the sort of girl to talk your head off: the kind of woman who would get on your nerves after the first ten minutes.”
“Hysterical! She’s no more hysterical than you are!” cried Southerley, in tones less subdued than ever. “You call her hysterical just because she isn’t stodgy, and you prefer stodgy women, like the ass you are!”
Excited by their argument, neither of the three young men had observed that the fair subject of their discussion had come back while it was in progress, and was now standing only a few feet away, where every word they uttered reached her ears with perfect distinctness. It was, of course, Repton, the non-talker, who caught sight of her first; and as, with a glance of horror, he seized Southerley by the arm, she tripped demurely forward, saying, as she came,—
“Stodgy or hysterical, gentlemen, she will be glad if you will let her pass.”
The consternation of the three culprits, especially of the two disputants, was terrible to witness. Southerley’s reddish, open-air complexion became a beautiful beet-root colour, while Bayre’s darker skin assumed a sallow tint which was most unbecoming. At the same time they muttered confused and incoherent apologies, most pitiful to listen to; and Repton, who felt the comparative security of his own position, was the only one in a fit state to offer some intelligible words. Perhaps, however, they were not very well chosen.
“I assure you—believe me, we—that is to say they—were not talking of you, madam,” he said earnestly, stimulated in his zeal for his friends by the delight of knowing that he was the only one of the three sufficiently innocent to address her. For though Southerley had indeed defended her charms, he felt that he had not done it in quite the right way, or in the subdued and refined accents befitting such a theme.
Luckily for them all, the attention of the lady, who received all these apologies with an airy and gracious good-humour but little soothing to their vanity, was speedily distracted by her discovery that the boat with the old man in it was not waiting for her, as she had expected, at the landing-place.
She looked about her with consternation. Southerley sprang to the rescue.
“The er—er—boat— The er—er—er gentleman has gone away—is over there,” said he, pointing to the speck which the two weather-beaten sails of the little boat had now become in the distance.
The young lady looked from the boat to the young men in surprise.