“Are you not making a mistake, sir?” she said coldly.
“Mistake? No. My dear Claire, why do you treat me like this? How absurd it is to refuse my letters, and play coquette when we meet. Here have I been watching for such an opportunity as this for weeks.”
Claire’s eyes flashed at his assumption, but she made no reply, and walked on.
“How can you be so absurd,” he whispered, as he kept pace with her step for step, “when you know how I love you?”
“Major Rockley!” she cried, stopping short and facing him, “by what right do you insult me like this?”
“How beautiful she is!” he said in a low tone.
Claire bit her lips, and, divining that he was disposed to treat her as one in an entirely different rank of life, she hurried on along the path, with the tall corn waving on either side, trembling with dread and indignation, as she realised that he was behaving to her as he might to some servant-girl.
“Say what you like to me. Be angry. Punish me. I cannot help it,” he whispered. “Your beauty maddens me, as it has done all these weary months, and I must speak to you now.”
“Major Rockley, I am alone and unprotected. I ask you, as a gentleman, to leave me.”
“And as an officer and a gentleman I would leave you, but my passion masters me. Sweet Claire, whom I love so dearly, how can you be so cruel and so hard?”