Still no word or sign.
She put her hand on his shoulder to rouse him.
“What are you going to do, Lawrie?” she asked again.
“Go to the devil!” in a low, bitter voice of unmistakable meaning, and without raising his eyes.
She slipped down on her knees beside him and clasped her hands round his arm.
“Don’t, Lawrie—don’t,” she prayed, all her long affection for him crystallising, and grasping just all that his bitter words might mean. “I can’t bear you to take it like this. Oh! it is terrible, and just when I am so happy. I will go to Paddy, she will listen to me—I will make her see things differently. Lawrie, don’t look like that—she shall be yours, I promise you she shall. You shall have your happiness.”
But he only shook her off roughly.
“Leave me alone. You! you have got your happiness, what do you know about mine?”
It was the first time in her life that he had spoken roughly to her, and Gwen shrank back almost as if she had been struck.
“You can’t—you can’t—mean to speak to me like that, Lawrie—”