“Not a shilling!” he cried, with an unpleasant cackling laugh.
May stood with the pretty smile upon her face, a strange contrast to the pained classic sorrow upon her sister’s better-formed features, amid perfect silence, till the front door closed, and Frank Burnett’s strutting step was heard on the shingle walk leading to the gate, when a change came over the bright, flower-like countenance, which was convulsed with anger in miniature.
“Ugh! Little contemptible wretch!” she exclaimed. “How I do hate you! Claire, I shall end by running away from the little miserable ape, if I don’t make up my mind to kill him. Ah!”
She ended with an ejaculation full of pain, and turned a wondering, childish look of reproach on her sister, for Claire had crossed to her, and suddenly grasped her wrist.
“Silence, May!” she cried.
“Oh, don’t!” said May, wresting herself free, and stamping her foot like a fretful, angry child. “And if you’ve come here to do nothing but scold me and find fault, you’d better go.”
“May—May! Listen to me.”
“No, I won’t. I’ll go up to my own room and cry my eyes out. You don’t know; you can’t imagine what a little wretch he is. I wish you were married to him instead of me.”
“May!”
“I won’t listen,” cried the foolish little woman, stopping her ears. “You bully me for caring for Sir Harry Payne, who is all that is tender and loving; and I’m tied to that hateful little wretch for life, and he makes my very existence a curse.”