She got up quickly, a sparkle in her eye. “Indeed? Wait! I shall not be gone above a minute or two!”
She whisked herself out of the room, only to reappear very soon afterward with her silver-mounted gun in her hand. “Do you not believe it, Charles? Do you not?” she demanded.
He stared at the weapon. “Good God! You?” He held out his hand, as though he would have taken it from her, but she withheld it.
“Take care! It is loaded!”
He replied impatiently, “Let me see it!”
“Sir Horace,” said Sophy provocatively, “told me always to be careful and never to give it into the hands of anyone I was not perfectly satisfied could be trusted to handle it.”
For an astounded moment Mr. Rivenhall, who was no mean shot, stared at her. The pent-up emotions in his breast got the better of him. He flung over to the fireplace and ripped down from the overmantel an invitation card that had been stuck into a corner of the large, gilded mirror. “Hold that up, stand there and give me that gun!” he commanded. Sophy laughed and obeyed, standing quite fearlessly with her back to the wall, and holding the card out by one corner. “I warn you, it throws a trifle left!” she said coolly.
He was white with anger, an anger that had very little to do with her slighting reference to his ability to handle a pistol, but even as he leveled the gun, he seemed in some measure to recollect himself, for he lowered his arm again, and said, “I cannot! Not with a pistol I don’t know!”
“Faintheart!” mocked Sophy.
He cast her a glance of dislike, stepped forward to twitch the card out of her hand, and stuck it against the wall under the corner of a picture. In great interest, Sophy watched him walk away to the other end of the room, turn, jerk up his arm, and fire. An explosion, deafening in the confined space of the room, shattered the stillness, and the bullet, nicking one edge of the card, buried itself in the wall.