“My dear girl,” he said, “don't get up as if you meant to go away. It has cost me some exertion to find you.”
“It will not cost you any exertion to lose me,” was her light answer. “I AM going away.”
He had reached her, and stood still before her with scarcely a yard's distance between them. He was slightly out of breath and even a trifle livid. He leaned on his stick and his look at her combined leaping bad temper with something deeper.
“Look here!” he broke out, “why do you make such a point of treating me like the devil?”
Betty felt her heart give a hastened beat, not of fear, but of repulsion. This was the mood and manner which subjugated Rosalie. He had so raised his voice that two men in the distance, who might be either labourers or sportsmen, hearing its high tone, glanced curiously towards them.
“Why do you ask me a question which is totally absurd?” she said.
“It is not absurd,” he answered. “I am speaking of facts, and I intend to come to some understanding about them.”
For reply, after meeting his look a few seconds, she simply turned her back and began to walk away. He followed and overtook her.
“I shall go with you, and I shall say what I want to say,” he persisted. “If you hasten your pace I shall hasten mine. I cannot exactly see you running away from me across the marsh, screaming. You wouldn't care to be rescued by those men over there who are watching us. I should explain myself to them in terms neither you nor Rosalie would enjoy. There! I knew Rosalie's name would pull you up. Good God! I wish I were a weak fool with a magnificent creature protecting me at all risks.”
If she had not had blood and fire in her veins, she might have found it easy to answer calmly. But she had both, and both leaped and beat furiously for a few seconds. It was only human that it should be so. But she was more than a passionate girl of high and trenchant spirit, and she had learned, even in the days at the French school, what he had never been able to learn in his life—self-control. She held herself in as she would have held in a horse of too great fire and action. She was actually able to look—as the first Reuben Vanderpoel would have looked—at her capital of resource. But it meant taut holding of the reins.