The old Frenchman's deductions were not far from right. Young Mr. Smith-Parvis, unaccustomed to opposition and believing himself to be entitled to everything he set his heart on having, being by nature predatory, sustained an incredible shock when the pretty and desirable governess failed utterly to come up to expectations. Not only did she fail to come up to expectations but she took the wind completely out of his sails, leaving him adrift in a void so strange and unusual that it was hours before he got his bearings again. Some of the things she said to him got under a skin so thick and unsensitive that nothing had ever been sharp enough to penetrate it before.
The smartting of the pain from these surprising jabs at his egotism put him into a state of fury that knew no bounds. He went so far as to accuse her of deliberately trying to be a lady,—a most ridiculous assumption that didn't fool him for an instant. She couldn't come that sort of thing with him! The sooner she got off her high-horse the better off she'd be. It had never entered the head of Smith-Parvis Jr. that a wage-earning woman could be a lady, any more than a wage-earning man could be a gentleman.
The spirited encounter took place on the afternoon following her midnight adventure with Thomas Trotter. Stuyvesant lay in wait for her when she went out at five o'clock for her daily walk in the Park. Overtaking her in one of the narrow, remote little paths, he suggested that they cross over to Bustanoby's and have tea and a bite of something sweet. He was quite out of breath. She had given him a long chase, this long-limbed girl with her free English stride.
"It's a nice quiet place," he said, "and we won't see a soul we know."
Primed by assurance, he had the hardihood to grasp her arm with a sort of possessive familiarity. Whereupon, according to the narrator, he sustained his first disheartening shock. She jerked her arm away and faced him with blazing eyes.
"Don't do that!" she said. "What do you mean by following me like this?"
"Oh, come now," he exclaimed blankly; "don't be so damned uppish. I didn't sleep a wink last night, thinking about you. You—"
"Nor did I sleep a wink, Mr. Smith-Parvis, thinking about you," she retorted, looking straight into his eyes. "I am afraid you don't know me as well as you think you do. Will you be good enough to permit me to continue my walk unmolested?"
He laughed in her face. "Out here to meet the pretty chauffeur, are you? I thought so. Well, I'll stick around and make the crowd. Is he likely to pop up out of the bushes and try to bite me, my dear? Better give him the signal to lay low, unless you want to see him nicely booted."
("My God!" fell from Thomas Trotter's compressed lips.)