Hawtrey laughed; he was usually sure of his ground with Sally.
"Why shouldn't I, when it's just what you are?"
"For one thing, Miss Ismay wouldn't like it."
The man's face hardened. "I'm not sure she'd mind. Anyway, Miss Ismay doesn't like a good many things I'm in the habit of doing."
Sally, who had watched him closely, turned away again, but a little thrill of exultation ran through her. It had been with dismay she had first heard him speak of his marriage, which was, perhaps, not altogether astonishing, and she had fled home in an agony of anger and humiliation. That state of mind had, however, not lasted long, and when it became evident that the wedding was, at least, postponed indefinitely, she commenced to wonder whether it was quite impossible that Hawtrey should come back to her. She felt that he belonged to her although he had never given her any very definite claim in him. She was a trifle primitive and passionate, but she was determined, and now he had done what she had almost expected him to do, she meant to keep him.
"You have fallen out?" she said, and contrived to keep the anxiety she was conscious of out of her voice.
The question, and more particularly the form of it, rather jarred upon Hawtrey, but he answered it.
"Oh no," he said. "As a matter of fact, Sally, you can't fall out nicely with everybody. Now when we fell out you got delightfully angry—I don't know if you were more delightful then or when you graciously agreed to make it up again." He laughed. "I almost wish I could make you a little angry now."
Sally had moved a little nearer to take a kettle off the stove, and she looked down on him with her eyes shining in the lamplight. She realised that she would have to fight Miss Ismay for this man; but there was this in her favour, that she appealed directly to one side of his nature, as Agatha, even if she had loved him, would not have done.
"Would you?" she said. "Dare you try?"