"You are lying most clumsily, Jack; or at best you are telling me but half the truth. You are going to see Mistress Margery."
"That is altogether as it may happen," I retorted, striving hard to keep down the flame of insensate rivalry which his accusings always kindled in me.
"It is not. Winnsborough is neither London nor yet Philadelphia, that you may miss her in the crowd. And you do not mean to miss her."
"Well? And if I do chance to see her—what then?"
"Don't mad me, Jack. You should know by this what a fool she has made of me."
"'Tis your own folly," I rejoined hotly. "You should blame neither the lady nor the man to whom she has given nothing save—"
"Save what?" he broke in savagely.
I recoiled on the brink as I had so many times before. The months of waiting for the death I craved had hardened me.
"Save a thing you would value lightly enough without her love. Let us have done with this bickering; find the colonel and ask his leave to go with me, if you like. Then you may do the love-making whilst I do the spying."
"No," said he; "not while you stand it upon such a leg as that."