"I can't understand Lina," Clare protested, after a pause; "she is usually so gentle. I am afraid you and she have taken a dislike to each other."
"How long has she known my cousin?" her companion inquired.
"Oh, she has only met him two or three times! I myself had no idea that there was anything at all between them until yesterday, when she was out with him all the afternoon; but this morning she confessed to me that she was engaged to him. It seems so very strange, as dear Lina had never given me or my aunt the least hint of such a thing. But of course I am extremely glad for her sake, as she is an orphan, poor child, and hasn't a penny——"
"Why do you say you are glad," Wallace interrupted, bluntly, "when in reality you are bitterly angry? Do you suppose I haven't guessed who wrote me that letter I got last night telling me to call here to-day?"
"What can you mean?"
"Oh, humbug is no good with me, Miss Cavan!" he said, laughing scornfully. "You've got your knife into this Grahame girl, and into my cousin too, for some reason best known to you. Did you want to marry him yourself?"
"Really, Mr. Armstrong——"
"Oh, it's no use turning on injured innocence for me! I never yet met the woman whose word I believed. If you want to know how it was I guessed you wrote me that letter, I'll tell you in a very few words. In it you spoke about sympathising with me and being very sorry for me; and you used the same expressions this evening. Well, no one is really sorry for me—why should they be? My troubles are of my own making; and if I get disinherited, it is entirely my own fault. What are you opening those pretty wicked-looking eyes for? Are you so little accustomed to truth that it startles you to hear it? I say my troubles are my own fault, because my uncle cares more for my little finger than for my cousin's whole body. Being a narrow-minded and a tediously pious and virtuous old nuisance himself, he has a secret love for a thorough-paced scamp. I have only to pretend to reform for a few weeks to get what I liked out of him; but I can't be bothered with it. For years roughing it among bad company in the Colonies took away all the taste for civilised society I ever had, which was never much. I can't sit hour after hour tied to a desk quill-driving; I can't pretend to interest myself in tomes and ledgers and bills-of-exchange any more than I can talk twaddle in a drawing-room over sloppy tea, or play lawn-tennis with a lot of prim bread-and-butter misses without a word to say for themselves. If I think a woman pretty, I tell her so; if I feel inclined to make love, I do so. I am made to lead my own life, to eat and drink and walk and sleep and fight and make love, and perhaps get drunk and get sober again, but it must be in my own way. No one can drive me, and no one presumes to pity me. Consequently, it wasn't difficult for me to guess that this pretty but unnecessary sympathy of yours was only a trick of speech to serve your own ends. Do you understand, Miss Cavan?"
"I understand," she replied, a rare blush creeping over her white skin, "that you are frightfully impertinent!"
"I mean to be more impertinent yet," he said, and, suddenly stooping, kissed her.