He pulled her down, so that she almost lost her balance, and took her throat in his large hand, holding her so that she was obliged to look into his face. “I’ve got a strong notion you’re maybe better able to take care of yourself than any of us guess,” he said. “Answer me now! How far’s it gone?”
Her heart beat a little faster, and her colour deepened to a lovely rose. “Indeed, I’m a good girl, sir,” she said.
“You’re a damned little liar!” he returned. “I don’t trust you, not an inch! What’s more, I don’t doubt Bart’s no match for you in wits. But I am, my girl! Don’t you make any mistake about that: I am! I’m warning you now! Don’t you make any plans to marry a Penhallow! I’d hound you into the gutter, you and all your family with you, before I’d allow Bart to take you to church! There! Give me a kiss, and be off with you!”
She made no objection to his kissing her, and stroking her smooth throat where he had grasped it, but she said, as she disengaged herself: “There’s no call for you to take on, sir. If it’s Jimmy that’s been trying to set you against me, I know well he has a spite against me.”
“And why?” he demanded. “What have you been up to give him a spite against you, I’d like to know?”
She withdrew to the door, and bent to pick up the Field. She laid this down on a table, and replied with one of her saucy smiles: “Indeed, I wouldn’t know, sir, unless it might be he’s jealous of me for being born the right side o’ the blanket.”
He slapped his thigh with a shout of laughter. “That’s one for me! You impudent hussy!”
She dropped him a mock curtsy and left him still laughing.
Outside his room, she lifted a hand to her breast, as though to feel the beating of her heart. She was profoundly disturbed, little though she had shown it; and she felt as if she had been running a great distance. She thought that she and Bart now stood in a position of danger, liable at any moment to be torn apart, for she was sure that once Penhallow suspected the truth he would be on the watch for confirmation of his suspicion. She was prepared to fight for possession of Bart; she thought that if it came to it she would fight the whole world by his side; but she had been brought up in poverty, and, unlike him, she did not minimise the hardships and the difficulties that must lie ahead of them if Penhallow disowned his son. Her most instant need was to find Bart, and to warn him not to own his intention of marrying her. She hoped she could induce him to behave prudently, but she was doubtful, knowing that he was innately honest, scornful of the tricks and shifts which were second nature to her. He did not condemn the little lies and deceits she used to protect herself; he laughed at them, believing that all women lied, and were not to be blamed for it. It was a feminine weakness, but a weakness to which he, rampantly male, was not subject. She would need all her art to persuade him to dissimulate to his father; and she became all at once frettingly anxious to find him before he could have time to go to his father’s room. He had gone off to a distant part of the estate, and had taken his lunch with him. She feared that he would only reach the house again in time to join the tea-party Penhallow was arranging, and she knew she would have no chance then of speaking to him, since she would be expected to help Reuben in the drawing-room.
Her mistress came into the hall, carrying a bowl of flowers which she had been replenishing, and exclaimed at finding her there standing with her back to Penhallow’s door. She took refuge instinctively in one of her lies. “I’ve been making up the Master’s fire, ma’am,” she said easily. “Let me take that from you!”